88% of Nvidia Employees in Blind Survey Want Huang to Stay as CEO

Of 232 Nvidia employees polled on November 9 and 10, 88% said Huang should stay in the job, 11% said he should step down voluntarily and 1% said the board should remove him, the report said.

The wider professional community was more divided. In a separate Blind poll of 1,689 professionals, 60% supported Huang staying on, 18% favoured a voluntary departure and 22% wanted the board to remove him, according to Investing.com.

The gap matters because the decision rests with Nvidia's board, which is weighing governance, national security concerns and investor confidence as well as staff sentiment. Huang has acknowledged an intimate relationship with a business executive and apologised to his family and colleagues. US intelligence officials reportedly believe the woman gathered information for Beijing, though no intelligence operation has been publicly established.

The board has opened an independent investigation into whether Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort and has said it has no reason to believe Nvidia's secrets or national security information were compromised. Nvidia has said Huang will remain chief executive while the inquiry proceeds, and Huang has said he will cooperate.

The affair has hit the stock. Nvidia shares fell 4.3% on Monday and 5.5% on Tuesday before recovering on Wednesday as AI stocks rallied, the report said. Traders on prediction markets put the chance of Huang being removed before 2027 at roughly 13% to 14%, according to Investing.com.

The report linked staff loyalty partly to the wealth many long-serving employees have built through stock awards during Huang's leadership. Huang co-founded the company more than three decades ago and steered it from graphics chips into the dominant supplier of AI processors.

Blind polls are self-selected and verify employment through work email; the survey's methodology could not be independently checked. Nvidia reports quarterly earnings next week, its first set of results since the controversy began.