Nilay Patel
Editor-in-chief of The Verge, which he co-founded in 2011, covering consumer technology, platforms and the policy around them.
“I think the reason Jensen resigned instead of being fired is so they don't have to explain this reasoning. He just gets to say, I'm a distraction. See you later. No further questions.”
The Vergecast · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026
Context
Patel had noted that Nvidia's board has not said why Huang is leaving. This is his own read on why it was framed as a resignation rather than a firing, not reporting.
Transcript
You know, like you can't just like ask an undercover cop if they're a cop. Like they don't have to tell you. Regardless of what people believe. So I think that this story ends up taking down the Trump administration and many characters within the Trump administration.
Interesting.
That's where this thing is headed, right? An affair with an NVIDIA executive in charge of healthcare might be the precipitating factor to get Jensen out the door. And we don't know the board's reasoning. They haven't said why or what's happening. And I think the reason Jensen resigned instead of being fired is so they don't have to explain this reasoning. He just gets to say, I'm a distraction. See you later. No further questions. There will be shareholder lawsuits and all this other, there already are shareholder lawsuits. And I think we'll learn some of this other stuff along the way. But the spy is still the point. Is there an agent of the Chinese government sitting next to one of the most powerful AI CEOs in the world, one of the richest people in the world, at the head of one of the most important companies that is…
I was just about to say exactly that, that who knew what when is about to become an incredibly important and very complicated story, because there's increasing evidence to suggest that the Alice Wong story goes back at least a couple of years, that maybe some people in the government, all the way…
is already their posture, right? AOC is talking about that. I think I saw Jamie Raskin talking about it yesterday. Like Jamie Askin's quote was something like, I don't care about the chief executive of one company. I care about the chief executive of the country.
Yeah. Great. Yeah.
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