Jensen Huang's departure triggers collective tribute in the tech world: some thank him for his mentorship, others lament the loss of a legend.

Beating AI News Flash: After Jensen Huang resigned as CEO of NVIDIA, leaders of tech companies such as Perplexity, Epic Games, and Hugging Face, as well as multiple Silicon Valley investors, publicly paid tribute one after another.

Aravind Srinivas, founder and CEO of Perplexity, praised Jensen Huang for spending 33 years turning a startup into the highest-market-cap company in the United States. He especially thanked Jensen Huang for taking precious time to provide guidance and advice to entrepreneurs like himself, and said: "Your resilience and perseverance should always be remembered."

Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games, lamented: "This is a sad day for NVIDIA, developers, the United States, and all of humanity."

In his view, NVIDIA is one of the few companies that continued to innovate after growing large, while many big companies have gradually fallen into the trap of extracting more profits. He also previously recalled that in 2015, Jensen Huang brought the latest graphics card to help Epic complete a real-time VR demo at the Game Developers Conference.

Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, detailed Jensen Huang's technological judgments: from betting on graphics chips in the early years, to driving NVIDIA's shift toward AI, to spending $7 billion to acquire Mellanox to solve high-speed interconnection for large-scale GPU clusters.

Maguire believes that Jensen Huang both understands technology and has the prestige of a founder CEO, and dares to invest in immature new technologies and startups. He admitted that the extramarital affair was a serious mistake, but Jensen Huang's contribution to the U.S. AI industry cannot be underestimated. "His departure will leave a huge gap, and the U.S. AI industry will need to work twice as hard to fill it."

Before Jensen Huang officially resigned, Musk had responded to a netizen's suggestion to hire Jensen Huang: "That would be my honor." After the resignation, Silicon Valley investor Naval Ravikant posted that the experiences of Steve Jobs and Uber founder Travis Kalanick had long proven that founders cannot simply be replaced. Musk replied: "Exactly."

Well-known tech podcast host Lex Fridman believes that letting Jensen Huang go is a huge mistake for NVIDIA. He said that he likewise detests extramarital affairs, but during years of private interactions, he saw how humbly and kindly Jensen Huang treated others, regardless of their status.

Clément Delangue, founder and CEO of Hugging Face, also stated: "This is truly terrible, I really wish it had never happened. It's a sad day."

He also pledged that Hugging Face will work even harder to promote open-source AI. "This matter is too important, we cannot stop."