Diner where Nvidia was born removes plaque honouring company amid Jensen affair row

A plaque marking Nvidia's founding booth at a Denny's in California disappeared after Jensen Huang resigned. Its removal adds an unusual postscript to leadership turmoil over affair allegations.

In Short

• Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang resigns amid affair allegations.
• Plaque marking Nvidia's founding booth at Denny's in San Jose disappears.
• Denny's staff confirm plaque removal but give no explanation.

The plaque marking the Denny’s booth where Nvidia was famously founded in 1993 has disappeared from the California restaurant, just a day after Jensen Huang resigned as the chip giant’s CEO amid a string of affair allegations.

Huang’s exit followed reports that he had been involved in multiple relationships, including an alleged affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of healthcare.

He had also admitted to an affair with Alice Huang, who was described in reports as an alleged Chinese intelligence asset, though China has denied the espionage allegations. Reuters also reported that Huang had an intimate relationship with a second Nvidia employee.

The missing plaque was located above the booth at a Denny’s restaurant in San Jose, where Huang and Nvidia co-founders Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem had discussed the idea that would eventually become one of the world’s most valuable technology companies.

According to a report by the New York Post, the plaque had commemorated the booth with the inscription: “The booth that launched a $1 trillion company.”

But the plaque was no longer there when the New York Post checked the restaurant. In its place was an empty section of brick wall with chipped paint.

NYP reported that two Denny’s employees confirmed that the plaque had been removed. When asked whether Denny’s or someone else had taken it down, an employee at the San Jose restaurant told the publication she could not provide any details.

The plaque had been installed during a 2023 ceremony attended by Huang and then-Denny’s CEO Kelli Valade. The event revisited Nvidia’s origin story, with Huang recalling how he and his co-founders had used the restaurant as a place to work on their idea.

Huang had said the group chose the booth because they could sit there for as long as they wanted, with “all the coffee you could drink and no one could chase you out."

The three had met at Denny’s, around eight miles from Nvidia’s headquarters, to discuss developing a chip capable of producing realistic 3-D graphics on personal computers. That idea eventually grew into Nvidia, now a central player in the artificial intelligence boom.

The sudden disappearance of the plaque came as Huang’s departure sent shockwaves through Nvidia. The company had also seen an unusual outpouring outside its Santa Clara headquarters, where people left flowers, candles and even bags of potato chips, a reference to the semiconductor chips Nvidia makes.

The empty wall at Denny’s has now added another strange postscript to the end of Huang’s tenure at the company he helped create.

- Ends