Jensen Huang and his leather-clad likeness had become synonymous with the technological giant he co-founded, Nvidia. They were so entwined that, this year, the company sold $178 sweaters with a pixel-art version of Mr. Huang on the front.
Now, in the wake of Mr. Huang’s resignation on Thursday after back-to-back cheating scandals, including an extramarital affair with a woman the U.S. government believes is a Chinese spy, the internet has taken ahold of his image to unleash a flood of memes.
In many cases, they are being made by A.I. enthusiasts who revered Mr. Huang.
Images of Mr. Huang have appeared in online parodies of music videos, Bollywood movies, American sitcoms and kiss-cams at Coldplay concerts — many generated using artificial intelligence, the technology that became widely available through the chips Nvidia produces.
The revelations about Mr. Huang, 63, one of the most powerful figures in the A.I. boom, are part of a long list of infidelity scandals that became memes.
Last year, the married chief executive of a tech start-up was caught on a kiss-cam at a Coldplay concert embracing the married but separated head of his company’s human resources department.
Mr. Huang’s image was superimposed on that viral moment by Peter Dedene, a Belgian software engineer. He said in a phone interview on Thursday that he was up late this week on his phone, scrolling the headlines about Nvidia.
