Jensen messed up by splitting the power between all board members equally, and not getting a bunch of his family on a board.
The lesson is that if you do the right, non-authoritarian thing, you get punished
The comparison was drawn because when you are such a position of power, your actions have such a monumental sway. Thousands, millions of people’s of lives are impacted, for better or for worse. In Jensen’s case, that’s up to the court of public opinion.
However the thinking is that when you are in that position, a just and fair society would probably want to keep just and fair and morally tact people in those positions.
IMHO I don’t care what way you want to spin it, when you have that level of influence over one of the major drivers of the AI boom, you have INCREDIBLE power compared to what most people think of when you say “private citizen”.
My buddies and I were just talking about how Jensen is probably one of the MOST liked amongst all the leading big tech CEO/Owners. I feel like the amount of grace this thread is giving him is proof of that.
I don’t understand how that’s comparable to the perception of Musk.
Are you sure you are not over reacting?
These tech CEOs hold a lot of influence and power. Thus they hold a lot of responsibility and must be held accountable. Point blank.
The man is smart enough to know he was playing with fire, and he got burned. The literal definition of FAFO.
The thing he did that was actually wrong was that the NVIDIA executive he was in a sexual relationship with was herself married. That is actually wrong, that’s not “playing with fire”, that’s simply wrong.
And just to be clear in practice, stocks are not priced based on their voting rights but rather expectations of their future cash flows (dividends) or simply how much the stock is expected to go up or down by. A lot of modern financial activity is nonsense.
If you really want to actually understand what a company is you should go look up when corporations became a thing and why. It had to do with various legal protections to stimulate economic activity and tax revenues.
All of these modern notions and principles that you’re invoking or basing your arguments on about ownership are most likely just contrived nonsense. These aren’t necessarily eternal principles of anything.
Why? Because most innovators have an experience of trying in vain to make contributions within a company/authority structure that directly undermined their capacity to make these contributions.
What is the actual value add of a “board of directors” except to basically be weak willed PMC/non founder-type people with a lot to lose reputationally and financially who can be cowed and/or blackmailed very easily.
The typical person on the board of a public company would fold to pressure as soon as they saw a NY Times called their phone.
Cheating on your wife and betraying your country is the right, non authoritarian thing? We arent having this discussion for any other reason than those two events happening. Its an insane lens of entitlement to view the situation as if he should indefinitely retain ownership due to ... what? Existing? But never have any of his actions have consequences. That's the promise you make by positioning the board shares in that manner: you promise to have accountability. Finding it a weakness to answer to others for your actions is definitely a popular style of thinking amongst the current group of wanna-be authoritarians in the presidential cabinet, "strange" how your first two examples of CEOs unwaveringly align with that political faction huh?
If you are competing in a neoliberal environment where other companies play by these rules, you are at a disadvantage if you are following some superset of them.
I am not saying that he did the right thing, I am just saying that if he set himself up in the same way as his competitors, he would have been fine. Maybe he would have to pay some fine/bribe, similar to what the prior 2 have done for their infractions against the people.
The biggest questions are:
1. Did Jensen knowingly compromise national security (criminal implications) 2. What is the fallout / impact in the AI arms race
Shareholders don't care that he's having sex outside his marriage.
Government could hold him accountable, and some of those gears have been turning over the last decade. In response he has spent a lot of money trying to steer elections and gain the influence of the ones in power to try to avoid accountability from that direction as well.
The double standard is that if you play capitalism well enough you are shielded from the consequences that others would face.
shocking illegal behavior? Buying votes in an election with his 1 million per day republican votes lottery.
The list is large and clearly Elon has been much more damaging to the public than Jensen but he has spent much more to be close to politicians so no consequences for him.
Yes Elon and Zuck are abhorrent, but when they have tried to break the law, they have been held accountable in some sense. Not to the extent that they deserve it, but still.
If they become as big a libility to their businesses, even their controling shares won't save them
Second, there is no proof that any moral standard is being applied at all. This could (and in my opinion likely) have nothing to do with a moral standard and more to do with extenuating information uncovered in the investigation or a strategic shift to protect against the current admin. There is likely so much happening behind the scenes and so many people have so much money to lose, I think it’s prudent for us to first exhaust all non-moral possibilities (unfortunately).
What kind of a shill are you exactly? U post a lot about China
In my eyes, this all comes down to the perception that someone is able to be compromised by non-monogamy. Jensen came out, apologized to his wife, and (at least publicly) communicated that he broke the expectations and boundaries of their relationship. This clearly communicated that a secret relationship compromises his position. And, should there be more secret relationships they'd continue to be used as leverage.
Musk isn't subject to this leverage because it's pretty clear that his relationships are not built on traditional definitions. Non-monogamy is either a clearly defined boundary in his relationship or simply not something that concerns him as leverage.
the board must know that the risk of Jensen staying on (likely due to whatever hasn't yet been brought to light) is greater than the risk of instability by firing him; whatever is unknown to us must be pretty serious (again, not in terms of more affairs, but other stuff, like selling chips to China or whatever)
Meta's board probably would have fired Zuck over the CA scandal but they were unable to because of the company structure
That's not certain. I tend to agree with you, but it is possible that the concern is for the effect on the employees. Especially the 2nd known affair is a violation of HR rules that are supposed to apply to everyone, and it's hard to argue that when you don't apply them to your CEO. By itself, I'm highly doubtful it would be enough (you can slap him on the wrist or something), but the effect on morale and company culture is a much larger concern. If people lose confidence in the company, they're more likely to jump ship, so you pay them more. And if investors lose confidence over any of this, then that's a much bigger and more expensive problem. There's a moral standard behind these types of things, even if it doesn't directly matter.
What we don't know and what really happened at the emergency board meeting are probably the key here. I'm sure there's plenty more going on that we can't see. More affairs are obviously possible, which is kind of meh until you find out who they were with and what deals they were part of.
It's even possible that Huang made the call -- it's not like he's going to escape public shaming at this point, and depending on his calculations of the repercussions, he could easily have tens of billions of dollars riding on this. He is clearly good at taking actions that maximize the market value of his company -- might this be another such action? Our armchairs aren't the best perspective from which to evaluate that.
Elon’s comparable fuck-up was betraying Ukraine with his Starlink intervention. It’s a huge deal. Unlike Nvidia, he has no Board to hold him accountable, it will have to be done by the Congress and states. (Europe will be useless as usual.)
As a result, that hammer will fall much more directly on his companies. It will just take more time to do so.
Zuckerberg, to my knowledge, hasn’t compromised American security in a comparable way to these two.
I had this exact conversation about Jensen with a Silicon Valley executive checks notes on Monday night.
There is a bubble that doesn’t seem to see the wave of contempt across the American political spectrum for these executives.
Or if they do see it they don't care. This bubble is convinced they are untouchable
If this were just the elites being out of touch, that would be one thing. It's more. There are rafts of folks–you can see them on here–who are convinced the only reason Jensen could be facing any wrath right now is because of a hare-brained conspiracy. This is honestly-felt fandom bordering on zeal.
You're saying Musk didn't know Ukraine was using these terminals for war, including air defenses, for the last few years? Despite constantly tweeting about it? And doesn't know that's what they're being used for now? What?
The best evidence for this being more ketamine nonsense is that Musk initially lied about the cut-off having been Trump's decision. Unfortunately, this time his actions may have crossed into treason–when he did this, he gave aid and comfort to an ally of a country America was at war with (Iran).
Never said anything close to that.
I think it's horrible. And it's an issue that's gotten multiple Fortune 100 CEOs fired [1]. It's categorically distinct from corruption and compromise of national-security laws.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/12/business/nvidia-jensen-hu...
Certainly feels to me like compromising American security
When Cambridge Analytica happened, no one kicked Mark out of Facebook/Meta.
Not making excuses for Jensen, at his status and power level, this stuff goes with the territory. But I cant help but see a double standard here.