The open-source community has just lost one of its most staunch advocates.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday. Previously, he admitted to having an extramarital affair with a person alleged to be a Chinese spy, which raised concerns about U.S. national security and also questioned the motives behind this executive's support for relaxing chip export controls to China.

Jensen Huang has always been a firm supporter of open-source AI, describing this ecosystem as beneficial for security, innovation, dissemination, and sovereignty. As cutting-edge AI laboratories increasingly wish to reduce their dependence on NVIDIA and turn to developing their own chips, supporting open-source also serves as a good way to diversify their customer base: companies can sell these chips to sovereign nations, enterprises, and any organization that wishes to have its own models.

However, Jensen Huang's resignation also raises questions: will NVIDIA continue to carry on his legacy and continue to support the open-source model community?

At the time of Jensen Huang's resignation, NVIDIA had not yet finalized the deal to acquire the open-source platform Hugging Face for $13 billion. Clem Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face, stated in a post on X that no matter what happens next, the company will continue to fight for open source.

NVIDIA also agreed to pay $6 billion to obtain a non-exclusive license for the technology of the open-source AI programming startup Poolside.

Within NVIDIA, Jensen Huang spearheaded the development of the Nemotron series of open-weight AI models, which are designed for long-running proxy AI systems and inference workloads, and may compete with closed-source, cutting-edge models. Jensen Huang also supports companies that can enhance the competitiveness of open models in the United States, having invested in startups such as Reflection AI and Thinking Machines Lab.

Jensen Huang's influence is not limited to NVIDIA's investments and product roadmaps. He has also become one of the most vocal opponents of Washington's efforts to restrict the development of the AI ecosystem.

Earlier this year, Jensen Huang published an open letter that was co-signed by 25 companies, including Microsoft, Meta, IBM, and Palantir, urging the U.S. government not to overly restrict open-weight AI models, many of which are from China.

The background that led to this open letter was that Washington was at that time discussing how the United States should respond to allegations that Chinese AI laboratories had stolen intellectual property from American counterparts. Reports indicate that both Anthropic and OpenAI had directly called on Washington regarding this matter, requesting enhanced protection.

Jensen Huang's high profile, combined with NVIDIA's market power, has made him one of the strongest advocates against the views of closed-model providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI. For security reasons, these companies have consistently advocated for more restrictions on advanced AI models.

In the absence of Jensen Huang, members of the open-source community are concerned that the successor may be more cautious. NVIDIA has appointed Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as the interim CEO. It is still unclear how Kress will handle the Hugging Face transaction or what his views are on supporting the open-model ecosystem, but during leadership transitions, priorities driven by the founders often get relegated.

Jensen Huang's departure may also strengthen the argument of some people in Washington who advocate for stricter restrictions on Chinese AI companies. Especially after the scandal arising from his relationship with Megaspeed executives and Alice Huang, who is accused of being a spy, the world is once again scrutinizing his efforts to relax chip export controls.

Imposing restrictions on open-weighting models from China could weaken the competition faced by American companies, while the most powerful American firms have always kept their models closed.

However, supporting open source is not just an idealistic initiative driven by Jensen Huang's enthusiasm. It is increasingly becoming the core of NVIDIA's business strategy.

As some of NVIDIA's largest customers, including Google and OpenAI, develop their own chips, NVIDIA has the motivation to foster a broader ecosystem of AI developers and customers.

The more participants there are in training, fine-tuning, and running the models, the more GPU will be sold, and the less NVIDIA will rely on a few leading laboratories.

Jensen Huang may have left, but NVIDIA still needs an open AI ecosystem. The question now is whether this commitment can continue without someone who made it a priority.

TechCrunch indicates that a contact has been made with NVIDIA for a review.