Several publicly traded companies have (or had) majority-owner CEOs, which makes it more than a little awkward for the board to fire them. I can't really see the board outing Zuckerberg under similar circumstances

Most certainly, but the statement was

> If you publicly humiliate your family and the business, you're out

There is no "* only applies to publicly traded companies". Hence, it is incorrect.

The bigger point I am trying to make here being that not everything is investor-driven. People can run businesses without that. It annoys me greatly that HN regularly forgets that.

In publicly-traded companies, the board is not the ultimate boss, though. That would be the shareholders. And, at Meta and many companies copying Meta's playbook who have IPO'd since (notably including Anthropic, though notably not including Nvidia), founder shares have so much voting power that the founders are effectively in complete control.

In theory, Nvidia shareholders, if dissatisfied with today's decision, could vote to oust the current board and replace it with people more sympathetic to Huang, who would, as their first decision, re-hire him as CEO, as would be their prerogative. This is... unlikely to happen.

None of the above is investment advice.