Elon Musk Says Nvidia Will Lose Deals Without Jensen Huang
Elon Musk says Nvidia will lose business it regards as critical now that Jensen Huang has gone, and he is writing as a customer who buys its chips in very large volume, arguing that much of the chipmaker's order book rested on personal relationships rather than written agreements.
In a post on X this weekend, Musk said Huang had driven Nvidia's supply chain "brilliantly", and then added that many of those deals were "a handshake with Jensen, not a written contract". The post was brief and gave no examples.
And the claim is Musk's own. He named no customer, gave no figure, produced no document and did not say which deals he meant, and Reuters's report of the post carried no response from Nvidia.
The argument turns on how Nvidia sells. Its data centre processors go to cloud operators, server builders and governments, that business supplies most of its revenue, orders are placed months ahead, and the allocation of scarce supply among buyers has been a running source of friction in the industry.
Huang resigned as chief executive this week after disclosing an affair. The independent directors of Nvidia's board have hired the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz to investigate his relations with Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman, and the suspicions of US authorities about her, which Beijing denies.
But Musk's post makes no reference to that inquiry and does not repeat the spying allegation. It is an argument about commercial relationships, written by a customer and a rival whose own companies buy Nvidia hardware in volume.
The market has already moved. Nvidia's shares have fallen more than 30 per cent from their peak, wiping more than 1.8 trillion US dollars from its market value, and the company has declined to comment on the correspondence reported by Reuters.
No customer has said it intends to cancel orders, and none has confirmed Musk's description of how the deals were struck.
So the sharpest public claim about Nvidia's commercial exposure is an unquantified post from another executive, set against a company that is not commenting and customers that have not walked.
Musk posted on X this weekend about Nvidia losing deals
He said many agreements were "a handshake with Jensen, not a written contract"
He offered no figures, customers or documents
Reuters's report of the post carried no Nvidia response
Huang resigned this week and a board investigation is under way
