“The booth that launched a $1 trillion company,” read the plaque at a San Jose Denny’s before it vanished and reappeared during Jensen Huang’s abrupt departure from Nvidia.
A commemorative plaque celebrating the Silicon Valley diner where Nvidia was founded in 1993 disappeared from the restaurant wall, just days after Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive.
Employees at the Berryessa Drive Denny’s location in San Jose, California, confirmed that the brass marker had been taken down, leaving behind an empty section of brick wall with chipped red paint, according to the New York Post.
The restaurant had installed the plaque in 2023 during a ceremony attended by Huang and then-Denny’s CEO Kelli Valade to honor the exact booth where Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem first mapped out the semiconductor enterprise over coffee and pancakes.
in the club shaking it somberly
By Friday, the diner reversed course and reinstalled the plaque. “We’re reinstalling the plaque recognizing the conversations at Denny’s that helped launch NVIDIA,” the company said. “Jensen Huang started at Denny’s as a dishwasher. Years later, he and his co-founders gathered in one of our booths to discuss the idea that became NVIDIA.”
The swift removal of the restaurant marker followed corporate turmoil at the tech giant after Huang resigned as CEO, president, and a member of its board of directors following reports about extramarital relationships, including an affair with a woman suspected by U.S. officials of having ties to Chinese intelligence. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress was appointed interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor.
Huang’s departure followed reports about his alleged relationships with multiple women, including Alice Huang, a woman whom US intelligence agencies reportedly suspected of having links to Chinese intelligence. In his letter, Huang said Nvidia’s board of directors had initiated an independent investigation into the situation. The former CEO is also the subject of an FBI probe.
Nvidia shares closed at $162.85 on Friday, dropping more than 30 percent from their recent October peak and wiping out hundreds of billions in market capitalization.
It's sickening to me that there are allegedly serious people who thought that "the board" should not have forced Jensen to resign, as if the board and not Wachtell was running the place. How naive. You are talking about a situation where the Justice Department, even this Justice…
More on San Jose Denny
Elon Musk says a petition to reinstate Jensen Huang as $NVDA CEO is underway and that he plans to sign it. That comes as Nvidia employees are already pushing for Jensen’s return. pic.twitter.com/nOur0HR0sD
The biggest problem with finding a new ceo for Nvidia is that Jensen made himself irreplaceable with that structure and his free form nature…