A plaque at a booth in a San Jose Denny's commemorating the spot where former CEO Jensen Huang came up with the concept for Nvidia has been reinstalled after it was briefly removed earlier this week. Huang is currently embroiled in bombshell revelations involving romantic trysts and foreign spies.
As NBC Bay Area reports, the plaque was first installed at the Denny's where Huang conceived of Nvidia and once worked himself in the fall of 2023. Denny's CEO Kelli Valade even attended a related ceremony marking the unique occasion. As of Thursday, the plaque had been removed.
On Friday, Denny's said it will reinstall the now-controversial memento. That follows a week that's seen Huang's name fill headlines across the globe for his alleged role in a honeypot scheme that may have provided China with backdoor access to Nvidia's highly-coveted advanced chips and trade secrets.
Yesterday, SFist detailed reports that suggest leading Chinese AI models may have been trained on Nvidia chips China wasn't supposed to have. That came after Thursday's news that Huang was resigning from his position as Nvidia's CEO in the wake of this still unfolding scandal.
In a statement, Denny's defended its decision to honor a man who now stands accused of engaging in three extramarital affairs — two with high-ranking Nvidia employees and one with suspected Chinese spy Alice Huang.
"We’re reinstalling the plaque recognizing the conversations at Denny’s that helped launch NVIDIA," the statement begins. "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 plaque commemorates that shared history. America’s Diner has long been a place where people and ideas come together, and that history deserves to be preserved."
Jensen Huang is currently scheduled to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee at some point before Thanksgiving.
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