Elon Musk says hiring Jensen Huang “would be an honor” as Nvidia founder quits as CEO

The Elon Musk hire Jensen Huang chatter began on 12 November, when Elon Musk replied “That would be an honor” on X to a ZeroHedge post headed “Elon please hire Jensen”, Yahoo Finance reported. The post concerned Jensen Huang, who went on to resign as chief executive of Nvidia. Musk named no role and no company, and Gizmodo wrote that he did not appear to make an actual job offer.

What happened

Reports that Nvidia’s board was weighing Huang’s future had spread through the day. Yahoo Finance cited Reuters as saying Nvidia shares fell “more than 8%” in extended trading after the news. Not a Tesla App reported that Musk’s reply came hours before Nvidia announced Huang’s resignation, and that CFO Colette Kress became interim chief executive with Harvey Jones as board chairman. Our earlier report covers the resignation itself.

The reporting around Huang concerns alleged extramarital relationships, which Gizmodo described as unproven. Yahoo Finance said Nvidia’s board stated it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised. None of the coverage reviewed carried a comment from Huang on Musk’s reply.

Key numbers

• $16.8 billion: the first-phase investment Tesla and SpaceX said in August they would put into Terafab, with construction running from December through 2028, per Yahoo Finance.
• 1 terawatt a year: the compute Terafab is meant to produce at a site in Grimes County, Texas, with Intel as a partner, according to Not a Tesla App.
• $20 billion: Tesla’s guided capital spending this year, against $8.5 billion in fiscal 2025, per Yahoo Finance.
• $45.4 billion: Tesla’s cash and short-term investments on 30 September, plus $30 billion of untouched credit lines, per Yahoo Finance.
• 161%: SpaceX’s third-quarter revenue growth, to $14.6 billion, according to the same Yahoo Finance analysis.

Why Terafab matters to Tesla and SpaceX

Terafab is the chip-making project Musk wants to run with Tesla and SpaceX. Not a Tesla App said the site in Grimes County would cover more than 100 million square feet and feed Optimus, Cybercab and SpaceX’s orbital data centers, and that the project has hired Intel veteran Gary Jiang as a director. SpaceX is already spending heavily on compute, as our report on its $74 billion AI campuses showed.

Huang has said chip manufacturing is hard. At a TSMC event in November 2025 he said “Building advanced chip manufacturing is extremely hard”, according to Not a Tesla App. The fight for AI hardware sits at the centre of the artificial intelligence industry, which is why a one-line reply drew so much attention.

What people said

The cost of Terafab has drawn comment from investors. Yahoo Finance quoted investor Ron Baron at the Baron Investment Conference saying “It’s gonna cost a trillion dollars.” Musk, speaking on the Moonshots podcast with Peter Diamandis, answered “Probably more than that”, Yahoo Finance reported. Musk’s goal, in the article’s wording, is “a terawatt of AI chips a year”.

What happens next

For now the Elon Musk hire Jensen Huang idea rests on a single reply, with no role, offer or response reported. Nvidia has Kress as interim chief executive, per Not a Tesla App. The next hard number on Terafab should come with Tesla’s 2027 capital spending guidance alongside fourth-quarter results in late January, which Yahoo Finance said should show how much of the first phase lands on Tesla’s books.