United States-based chipmaker Nvidia is investigating its chief executive officer, billionaire Jensen Huang, after he confirmed he had an intimate relationship with a woman accused of working for Chinese intelligence. In an announcement on Sunday, Nvidia said the probe would be conducted by a “committee of independent directors” with outside counsel. It said the board continued to have “confidence in Jensen and his leadership team”.
Huang will continue to lead Nvidia during the probe. The investigation follows a report in The New York Times last month that Jensen may have been the target of a Chinese espionage plot. China and the US have been in competition to dominate key tech sectors like artificial intelligence (AI).
Amid the AI boom, Nvidia has seen demand for its chips and programming interfaces explode, resulting in the company being valued in the trillions of dollars. For years, the US has sought to restrict the export of advanced chips to China, fearing the Asian superpower could gain an edge over its technology and military sectors. But on October 29, The New York Times said it had obtained exclusive information that a Chinese woman named Alice Huang, or Huang Le, sought to cultivate close ties with Jensen Huang in an effort to glean information about Nvidia’s technology.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, has denied any allegations of spying in the case. The New York Times also reported that Alice Huang’s employer, Megaspeed, had become one of Nvidia’s largest buyers, purchasing some $4.8bn in equipment from the US firm. Jensen Huang’s ties to Alice Huang, who is of no relation, spurred fierce bipartisan backlash in the US Congress in the aftermath of the report.
And we need to pass bipartisan legislation we have ready to stop advanced American technology from going to China.” Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives also called on Huang to appear and testify before Congress about the affair on November 18. In an email to Nvidia staff on Sunday, Huang had admitted to having an extramarital relationship. My actions hurt her and our children.
There is no excuse for what I did,” Huang said. Nvidia has grown rapidly in recent years with the rise of AI, producing chips for large language models developed by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google. Huang has also been closely working with US President Donald Trump since the Republican leader returned to office in 2025.
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