Nvidia's Board Investigates Its CEO: The Jensen Huang Affair, the Spy Allegation, and China's Read
Nvidia's board has launched an independent investigation into CEO Jensen Huang after reports of a past relationship with a Chinese businesswoman at the center of a US export-control probe. Chinese readers are watching the story from the other side: the anti-monopoly probe, the tax investigation, and the Embassy's 'baseless' dismissal.
Nvidia's board has launched an independent investigation into whether its CEO, Jensen Huang, was compromised by a foreign intelligence operation, the company said on November 8. The probe follows weeks of reporting that Huang had been in close contact with a Chinese businesswoman, Alice Huang, a former executive of the Singapore cloud-computing firm Megaspeed, and that US authorities are investigating whether Megaspeed violated American export controls. NVIDIA's board acted a day after the Financial Times reported that Huang had a past romantic relationship with her.
According to the Financial Times report, the two were photographed together in Taipei: once in June 2024, at a bar with other tech executives, and again in May 2025, outside a restaurant. Nvidia had not responded to the relationship report at the time of writing. A separate report, carried by Axios, obtained a draft of an email Huang wrote to employees in which he acknowledged the affair and apologized to his wife.
China's read on the story is the opposite of a scandal, and the Chinese Embassy in Washington has already dismissed the spy allegation as "baseless" and "completely a smear against China." On Chinese social media, the response has been to note that the company is under pressure from both directions: China's market regulator has opened an anti-monopoly investigation into Nvidia's practices, and the same week, reports surfaced that American authorities are investigating Huang for some 8 billion dollars in unpaid taxes. One post drew nearly 2,000 likes with the summary: "Nvidia is caught in the rain with the roof leaking -- China is investigating it for monopoly, the US for its CEO's tax bill."
The story is the most personal an AI-chip story has yet been, but the stakes are the usual ones. Nvidia is the most important company in the AI buildout, and the Chinese readers who are watching it are the same readers who have been following the AI trade's every turn: the market's split after the midterms, the AI hardware selloff, the AI bubble's grip on Chinese retail investors. What Huang's email -- the affair, the apology, the espionage allegation -- is the first hint of the story's second half: the AI buildout is now a matter of national security, and the CEO of the company at the center of it is a person who can be targeted.
Whether the board's investigation finds anything, or the espionage allegation falls apart, the pieces are now in place: the export controls, the anti-monopoly probe, the tax investigation, the romance. A company whose CEO has been a friendly face in China's tech industry -- Huang has been a regular visitor to the country -- is now a company whose CEO is a person who can be targeted."