SANTA CLARA — A letter spreading fast across social media claims that hundreds of Nvidia employees signed a demand for the company's entire board to resign and for ousted founder Jensen Huang to be brought back as chief executive — and threatens that the signatories will quit for Elon Musk's SpaceX if the board refuses. The document is fabricated.

The letter, which circulated on X on 13 November, names senior technical leaders as signatories, including Bryan Catanzaro, Nvidia's vice president of applied deep learning research, accelerated computing president Ian Buck, and chief scientist Bill Dally. It says the board's handling of Huang's departure jeopardised the company, calls for new independent directors, and warns that the signatories would leave to join SpaceX's Terafab project.

The named signatory says he never signed it

Catanzaro, whose name appears on the letter, denied it himself on X on 13 November. "This letter is clearly fake, and even if it were real, I would not have signed it," he wrote. In a fuller post the same day he said: "There is a made-up letter circulating online asking NVIDIA's board to reinstate Jensen, claiming my involvement. This letter is obviously fake, and even if it were real I would not sign it. I am grief-stricken that Jensen is no longer with NVIDIA. At the same time, I fully support NVIDIA's board and have confidence in their decisions. I've worked with Colette for years and know her as an extraordinary leader. She has my full support."

"Colette" is Colette Kress, the chief financial officer named interim chief executive when Huang resigned on 12 November. No other person listed as a signatory has confirmed signing the letter, and a community note added to the post on X says there are no reports verifying such a joint letter.

Copied from the 2023 OpenAI letter

The document's wording gives it away. It closely mirrors the protest letter more than 700 OpenAI employees sent to their board in November 2023, after chief executive Sam Altman was ousted. Software developer Daniel Zhang pointed out the match on X: the OpenAI letter's line that Microsoft had guaranteed positions for OpenAI employees became, in the Nvidia version, a claim that Elon Musk had guaranteed positions for Nvidia employees.

That swap does not hold up. Microsoft did announce plans to hire Altman and his colleagues in 2023; this time, there has been no confirmation that Musk or SpaceX promised to hire Nvidia employees. The threat to decamp to Terafab is invented, not reported.

What is real: employees really are calling for his return

The fake letter is riding on a genuine wave of staff discontent, which is what makes it persuasive. According to WIRED, a long-tenured engineer posted on Nvidia's internal suggestion board before Huang stepped down, asking the board to weigh employees' views before deciding his fate. The post drew more than 1,600 comments, a majority of them in support of bringing Huang back, and one employee sent a companywide email demanding transparency about his exit. About two dozen employees have also posted on LinkedIn in support of Huang.

Elon Musk has separately backed a reinstatement petition, writing on X on Friday that one was under way and that he intended to sign it. And the Financial Times reported that Nvidia's board has approached Arm chief executive Rene Haas as a possible permanent successor. None of that makes the letter genuine: the 1,600 figure counts comments on an internal forum post, not signatures on a letter, and a petition is not a board ultimatum signed by the company's top technical leaders.

Huang resigned on 12 November as president, chief executive and director after reports of an extramarital relationship and a board inquiry into reports that he was targeted by Chinese intelligence — a saga we examined in detail earlier this week, when the board's move to prepare for his ouster wiped roughly $1 trillion from the company's value. The board says it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, and third-quarter results are due on 17 November.

The verdict

The letter is a fake, built by swapping names into a three-year-old OpenAI protest letter and attaching the names of executives who never signed it — one of whom has publicly disowned it. Real employee support for Huang's return exists, in an internal forum thread and a separate petition, but that is not the document circulating on X. The claim that hundreds of Nvidia employees signed a letter demanding the board resign and Huang return is False.

Follow our Technology desk for ongoing coverage of Nvidia's leadership search and its 17 November results.