A petition demanding that Jensen Huang be reinstated as chief executive of Nvidia had gathered more than 108,000 signatures by Saturday afternoon. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has endorsed the initiative.

“There is a petition to bring Jensen back, and I am signing it too,” Musk said on the social media platform X.

The “Stand with Jensen” campaign said on its website that the signatories include more than 58,000 shareholders, over 5,600 current Nvidia employees and more than 1,000 former employees.

The list also contains fake names, however, including “Tim Cruise”, described as a Hollywood actor, and “Xi Jingping”, an apparent misspelling of the Chinese president’s name. In a post on X on Saturday, the organisers said they were working to remove the fraudulent signatures.

An Nvidia employee who signed the petition said a similar effort was under way within the company. A post expressing the same sentiment in support of Huang has appeared on an internal Nvidia portal where employees ask questions and submit suggestions.

Wired magazine reported that the post had drawn 1,600 comments as of Thursday, though the employee claimed the number had since more than doubled.

Earlier this week, in a letter to staff, Huang acknowledged an extramarital relationship. Nvidia’s board then said it had opened an inquiry into whether he had been a “target of foreign intelligence activity”. A few days later, reports emerged of another relationship, with a fellow Nvidia executive, and Huang resigned.

The board appointed Colette Kress, the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, as interim CEO until a permanent successor is found.

Meanwhile, US Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Thursday that the Justice Department had not yet reached a final conclusion on whether Alice Huang was a spy.

The organisers of “Stand with Jensen” have published an open letter to Nvidia’s board on the website, saying they believe the board removed Huang without an investigation or due legal or institutional process.