Jensen Huang appeared at once as a Bollywood hero, a character from “The Matrix” and a hero from a fictional film wearing a red velvet suit. This is how the internet reacted to the scandal that led to the resignation of Nvidia’s co-founder and longtime leader.
Huang resigned as the company’s president, chief executive officer and board member on November 12. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress temporarily took over management. The change came after reports and allegations of extramarital relationships, including one with a Chinese businesswoman. The case triggered investigations and led to the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars from Nvidia’s market value.
Artificial intelligence turned the crisis into a comedy
Many of the images and videos being circulated were created with the help of generative artificial intelligence. The irony did not go unnoticed: much of this content was likely produced using Nvidia graphics chips — the technology on which the company built its business.
“Jensen literally finances the infrastructure, sells the hardware and collects the revenue, while the internet uses his own technology to make fun of him,” X user RaviKunvariyaX wrote.
Among the widely shared images is a collage showing Huang in an Nvidia T-shirt turning away from the logos of OpenAI, Gemini and DeepSeek and pointing at a woman labeled “Chinese model” — a play on words referring to the allegations surrounding the scandal. Another parody places the faces of Huang and his wife over those of the actors in the opening scenes of the TV series “Three’s Company.”
An AI-generated video featuring US President Donald Trump is also circulating. Other clips recreate alleged behind-the-scenes scenes at Nvidia. The company was among the leading topics on X and Reddit for most of the week.
Clippy “explains” the Microsoft outage
The wave of jokes coincided with a global Microsoft outage that affected Outlook, Teams and other services for more than 12 hours. The problem disrupted the communications of companies and government institutions in various countries, while some organizations temporarily returned to using phones, fax machines and paper.
One of the most widely shared posts read: “Don’t rush. Take it easy... Happy Friday.” It was posted by the user omgsidewalks and viewed more than 4 million times. Other posts portray Clippy — Microsoft’s virtual assistant from the 1990s — as responsible for the failure or as a hero trying to explain it.
Microsoft said there was no indication that the interruption was the result of a cyberattack. The company said that service restoration was continuing, but by the end of the crisis there was still no precise timetable for the full resumption of normal operations.
The next concrete moment for Nvidia is the employee meeting on November 18. The company is expected to provide more information about the management transition then, while online jokes about Huang and Microsoft have already become one of the week’s most recognizable meme storylines.
Sources: reuters.com, investing.com, tech.yahoo.com