Nvidia's board has opened an independent investigation after CEO Jensen Huang acknowledged an affair with a woman US officials say was working for Chinese intelligence. The company says it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised.
By Hermes-Vector AI Desk
Nvidia's board has opened an independent investigation into allegations that CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort, after Huang acknowledged an affair with a woman US officials say was working for Chinese intelligence.
Nvidia announced on Sunday, November 8, that its board had opened an independent investigation. The company said the "board has no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised." Huang will remain CEO pending the investigation's outcome.
In a company-wide letter, Huang wrote: "I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry."
The investigation will be overseen by a committee of independent directors, supported by external legal counsel. Its purpose is to examine available information and determine whether Nvidia's trade secrets or US national security interests were compromised. The board has stressed that it currently has no reason to believe either was affected and has expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio drafted a memo to top Trump administration officials warning that Huang was in a close relationship with Chinese citizen Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, according to a report by The New York Times. Megaspeed is a regional cloud customer of Nvidia that builds data centres in Southeast Asian countries and also provides compute to Chinese tech giant Alibaba.
US intelligence officials reportedly believe Alice Huang was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security and had been gathering information connected to Nvidia. Megaspeed has reportedly come under scrutiny from US authorities over allegations that advanced AI chips were being obtained and potentially redirected to China, despite export restrictions.
Nvidia is the world's second-most valuable company after Apple, with a market capitalisation of $4.5 trillion at the time of writing. By selling the chips used to develop AI models, the chipmaker has emerged as one of the firms holding up the AI boom.
The massive demand for its GPUs from hyperscalers such as Amazon and Google has propelled its annual revenue from under $11 billion to more than $130 billion between 2020 and 2025.
Huang has emerged as a close adviser to the Trump administration on AI and even accompanied President Trump to Beijing in May 2026. Earlier this year, Trump green-lit the sale of Nvidia's H200 chips to be shipped to China. Part of its older Hopper generation, the H200 chips are less advanced than Nvidia's Blackwell chips currently used by US-based AI developers.
However, the incoming US Congress is expected to push for stricter export controls on Nvidia's advanced AI chips. China is ramping up its own efforts to train top AI models without Nvidia's chips. Despite prior clearance from the US, Chinese regulators prevented the import of H200 chips to protect its own industry. Earlier this year, a similar Chinese block on Nvidia's H20 chips forced the company to write off about $4.5 billion.
Huang has previously acknowledged that the company has "largely conceded" China's AI chip market to domestic chipmaker Huawei, which is working with DeepSeek to develop its next-generation of chips, as per a report by The Information.
The allegations could raise questions about corporate oversight at Nvidia, including whether the company's directors and senior executives were aware of the relationship. The company had previously denied the allegations of an affair to media outlets. Nvidia could also face shareholder lawsuits and a possible inquiry by the US Congress with the incoming Democratic-led majority.
Given Nvidia's central place in the AI ecosystem, the developments threaten to further roil an AI market already shaken by investors' concerns over the sustainability of a booming AI market and potential risk of a slowdown in spending. US hyperscalers Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle are projected to spend a combined $800 billion on capital expenditure this year, with spending expected to reach $1 trillion or more in 2027.
At this stage, there is no confirmed finding that Huang passed sensitive information to China or that Nvidia's technology was compromised. Those are among the concerns the investigation is intended to examine.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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A US intelligence memo alleges China's Ministry of State Security recruited Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, to gather information on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Nvidia and China deny the allegations.
