Also, like, the affairs and one of them very clearly bypassing export controls were… well known about? Maybe not super publicly known or publicized, but it wasn’t a deeply held secret. Anyone who got curious and did 20 minutes of searching could find out about it.

This is very obviously a public excuse to remove him because they don’t want to publicly explain the real reasons. Even the chip smuggling thing is probably an excuse.

If I had to guess at the real reason, it’s because they see a collapse in demand for their chips coming, and ether cooler heads are pissed because his circular financing and other shenanigans have made this worse for Nvidia than it otherwise would have been, or hotter heads are pissed that he’s not willing to go even harder on shenanigans to keep things going longer.