How Jensen Huang’s Affair Spiraled Into a National Security Nightmare

In June 2024, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang was in Taipei for an annual computer-industry trade show. Nvidia CEO Jensen HuangLate one night, a group of technology executives gathered at a bar. Among them was Alice Huang, then a top leader at a Singapore-based data center company.

Huang said she could likely persuade the Nvidia chief to join them. “Jensen’s a great friend of mine,” she said to the group, according to a tech executive who was present. She sent a text, and a few minutes later, Jensen Huang arrived and ordered a whiskey.

He held forth briefly to the gathered executives, then left alone, saying he was tired, the person said. A photo from the evening posted on social media shows Jensen and Alice sitting side by side on a red banquette, he wearing his trademark leather jacket, she in a sleeveless top and pearl necklace.

Within months, the U.S. government would be investigating whether Alice Huang’s company, Megaspeed, was illegally diverting AI chips made by Nvidia for use in China, and authorities in Taiwan and Singapore would be probing what they suspected were her ties to China and its intelligence services.

It was the beginning of a reckoning that now threatens Huang’s leadership of his company and the AI industry that depends on its technology and financial help. On Sunday, Nvidia’s board said it had launched an independent investigation into whether Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.

The disclosure followed reports by The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other outlets that the U.S. government had concluded Alice Huang was likely sending information to Chinese intelligence while having a close relationship with Jensen Huang.

The board said it had “no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised” and that it had “confidence in Jensen and his leadership team.” Huang apologized for infidelity to his family and Nvidia colleagues in a staff memo.

“I love our country and our company,” the CEO wrote. The revelations come against a tense backdrop in Washington, where different factions of the Trump administration have spent two years battling over AI policy and its role in the U.S.-China rivalry.

They have raised sharp new questions about how Nvidia wielded its influence, aggressively lobbying for the ability to sell advanced AI chips to China, despite policies designed to preserve an American edge in the technology race.

On Monday, President Trump said Huang had told him that “he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.” Trump also said he didn’t remember receiving classified information—included in a spring memo prepared under the supervision of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to people familiar with the matter—warning that Huang had a relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security on Monday responded to a report by the New York Times that it walked away from an investigation into Megaspeed’s suspected chip diversion after an outreach by an Nvidia executive.

“BIS conducts all enforcement strictly by the book,” a spokesman said. An Nvidia spokesman said the company prohibited all sales and shipments to Megaspeed in June 2025, and that ban is still in place. Nvidia got permission from the Commerce Department unit overseeing export controls for parts and replacement components sent to the company since then, he said.

U.S. intelligence officials never gave Huang a warning that he might be a target of foreign intelligence efforts, often referred to as a defensive briefing, the spokesman said. The saga came up during an intelligence briefing focused on Iran for top lawmakers Monday.

Several from both parties said they hope to pass aggressive chip-export restrictions as part of a proposed defense-spending package. “Clearly in this environment with all the cyber threats and all the world of superintelligence, these types of things take on an added significance,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said.

A former television reporter for Chinese state media, Alice Huang joined Megaspeed in 2023 after a stint in the financial sector, and she was listed on a registration in Singapore as a company director from March to November 2023.

The company, a spinoff of Chinese company 7Road Holdings, advertised itself as a cloud provider of Nvidia hardware for the Asia-Pacific region. Alice Huang met Jensen Huang at an Nvidia event in California in March 2024, the Journal has reported.

Soon after, they would meet up again at the cocktail bar in Taipei. The New York Times earlier reported on the gathering. By later that year, authorities in several countries had grown concerned about Megaspeed’s ties to China.

The company has previously stated that it is a legitimate and compliant company that didn’t engage in illegal activities. The Commerce and Justice Departments opened an investigation into whether the company was smuggling chips into China, according to people familiar with the matter.

Authorities in Singapore and Taiwan focused on Alice Huang, putting physical surveillance teams on her, The Journal has reported. Officials involved in those investigations suspected she was recruited by Chinese intelligence services after they learned of what they saw as a close relationship between her and the Nvidia chief.