On Sunday, Jensen Huang told his staff he had been unfaithful to his wife. Hours later, Nvidia’s board announced an investigation into whether the CEO of the world’s most valuable company was the target of a Chinese spy operation.
Huang is Nvidia’s founder and its public face, the executive in the leather jacket whose chip keynotes move markets. Nvidia’s chips sit at the center of the AI boom, which is exactly why U.S. intelligence was watching who was getting close to him.
The woman is Alice Huang, a former executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore based chip company that buys Nvidia processors. She is no relation to Jensen Huang. A memo that circulated among U.S. policymakers this year, based on American intelligence, claimed China’s Ministry of State Security had recruited her to get close to him. The New York Times reported in late October that U.S. intelligence believed the two had built a close relationship, and the Financial Times reported the memo described them as romantically involved.
“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did.”
Jensen Huang, in his message to Nvidia staff
Nvidia published Huang’s message to staff on Sunday. It did not name her. The board said it has “no reason to believe” national security or company secrets were compromised, that Huang fully supports the review, and that independent directors working with outside lawyers will run it.
Washington was already moving before the apology. The chairs of three House committees have invited Huang to a closed door briefing on November 18 about his dealings with her, and he has until November 11 to answer. Nvidia reports earnings on November 17, so the biggest name in AI walks into earnings week with his own board investigating him.
When the first reports surfaced, Nvidia called his interactions with her “not unusual or unexpected” and said it does not share classified information with customers. That was before the apology. The board says it still has confidence in Huang, and there is no public succession plan behind him. The man who built a five trillion dollar company now has to convince his own board he was not played.
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