MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Nvidia investigates founder Jensen Huang over his relationship with an alleged Chinese agent

The company announced on Sunday that it was starting the investigation “in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort”

Nvidia’s board has opened an independent investigation into founder and chief executive Jensen Huang after it emerged that he had an extramarital relationship with a businesswoman of Chinese origin whom US intelligence services link to Beijing’s espionage. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the FBI is investigating the case. No one has been charged.

The company announced on Sunday that it was starting the investigation “in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort”. Huang acknowledged the relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based AI infrastructure company Megaspeed, to whom he is not related despite sharing a surname. “I am deeply sorry,” he wrote in a memo to employees, according to Yahoo Finance. Nvidia said in a statement that it has no “reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia’s secrets have been compromised”.

According to The New York Times, a classified intelligence report, overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, linked Alice Huang to China’s Ministry of State Security and concluded that she sought information on advanced chips and to influence their large-scale distribution in China. Her whereabouts are unknown, according to U.S. News. A source cited by NBC News also said the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into Megaspeed, which is suspected of shipping export-restricted Nvidia chips to China; the Commerce Department already had an inquiry open into the company. Lawmakers have called for a congressional hearing.

Trump, who said he had spoken with Huang, said Huang told him he did not know the woman was a spy. “We’ll look into it. I know the FBI is investigating, and I think he’ll come out fine,” he said at the White House, where he said he was “amazed” by the allegations.

The case affects the most important company in the artificial intelligence industry. Nvidia controls between 80% and 90% of the AI accelerator market, according to a Silicon Analyst study, and designs in California chips that Taiwan’s TSMC manufactures. Huang, 63, was born in Taiwan and raised in Oregon. The United States restricts sales of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China, and Huang lobbied Trump this year to ease those controls; according to El País, Washington later allowed a series of H20 chips to be sold to Chinese companies in exchange for 25% of the revenue.

Nvidia shares came under renewed pressure on Tuesday, in a week when major tech stocks fell sharply after the US midterm elections.