Nvidia Board Opens Investigation After Jensen Huang Admits Affair Tied to Alleged Chinese Spy

Nvidia's board of directors said Sunday it has opened an independent investigation into Chief Executive Jensen Huang after reports that U.S. intelligence agencies believe a woman with whom he had a personal relationship was passing information about the company to Beijing. In a message to employees the same day, Huang admitted the affair and apologized to his family and staff.

"I owe my family and all of you an apology," Huang wrote in the statement, posted on Nvidia's newsroom site. "I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it." He added that "my family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy," and said he intends to remain in his role while cooperating with the inquiry.

What the board is examining

In a separate statement from its board of directors, Nvidia said a committee of independent directors, advised by outside counsel, will review "all available information" following reports that Huang "was the target of a foreign intelligence effort." The board said it has "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised," but that the review would proceed regardless, and that it retains confidence in Huang and his leadership team.

The woman at the center of the reports, identified in coverage from CNBC and other outlets as Alice Huang, no relation to the CEO, is tied to Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud-computing firm and Nvidia customer. The New York Times and the Financial Times have reported that U.S. intelligence agencies came to suspect, after a Commerce Department official visiting a Megaspeed data center in Malaysia in late 2024 spotted Nvidia chips on-site, that she had been relaying sensitive information to Chinese authorities. Megaspeed has previously been investigated over claims it helped Chinese firms evade U.S. export controls on advanced chips; Nvidia has said those allegations were "thoroughly investigated and debunked."

Congress steps in

Three Republican committee chairs in the House sent Huang a letter on November 5 asking him to appear for a closed-door briefing on November 18, according to Axios, which also reported that the draft employee email it obtained matches the apology Nvidia later published. The Times has reported that President Trump was briefed on the intelligence findings roughly a year ago but did not act on them, and more recently voiced public support for Huang, calling him "brilliant." China's government has dismissed the espionage allegations as "groundless speculation."

The episode lands at a delicate moment for Nvidia, which Wall Street has valued as the world's most valuable company on the strength of demand for its AI chips, and for Huang personally, who has lobbied the administration to loosen export restrictions on sales to China even as his own company sits at the center of the national-security debate over those exports. Nvidia is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings on November 17, a day before Huang's planned appearance before lawmakers, and to host a major developer conference in Washington later in the month. Neither Nvidia nor Huang has disclosed how long the board's review is expected to take, and the company has not said whether Alice Huang retains any business relationship with Megaspeed or with Nvidia's supply chain.