Jensen Huang alleged Chinese spy affair investigation, Digi Mart USA News: A figure at the center of the artificial intelligence industry, Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang, has been linked to an alleged affair with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy, prompting an investigation.
According to The New York Times, U.S. intelligence officials believe Alice Huang, a Chinese business executive with close ties to Jensen Huang, has been engaged in espionage for Beijing.
It is currently unclear where she is located.
Nvidia, one of the most valuable companies in the world, has launched an independent investigation into the reports. The company said it does not believe U.S.
national security has been compromised and added that Jensen Huang remains committed to leading the company.
The Times reported that U.S. officials believe Alice Huang was recruited by China’s top intelligence agency.
Alice Huang has no family relationship with Jensen Huang. She served as a senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company, from March to November 2023.
Megaspeed had been suspected of helping transfer Nvidia chips to China, but Nvidia maintains that those concerns were found to be unfounded after investigation.
BBC has learned that the Singapore government is investigating Megaspeed over past allegations that it evaded U.S. export sanctions on Nvidia’s high-end chips.
BBC has contacted Megaspeed for comment. The company told the Times last month that its current management takes the allegations seriously and has appointed outside legal advisers to conduct an internal investigation.
Reports say intelligence surveillance found communications between Alice Huang and a U.S. citizen.
Authorities then identified that U.S. citizen as Jensen Huang through a process known as unmasking.
It remains unclear whether Alice Huang actually gathered intelligence and passed it to Beijing and, if so, what information was involved. She did not respond to the Times’ request for comment.
A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, Guo Jiakun, said at a regular press briefing on Monday: “We have responded to this before. The so-called ‘Chinese spy’ narrative is pure speculation and slander.”
On Sunday, a reporter asked President Trump whether he regretted not “acting on the intelligence.” He replied: “No, I don’t think so. I think he is an honest man.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined to comment when asked about Jensen Huang. According to the Times, Rubio oversaw the drafting of a memo earlier this spring warning the Trump administration about Jensen Huang’s relationship with the Chinese businesswoman.
Because Nvidia is central to the U.S.-China competition in artificial intelligence, the affair has raised national security concerns among U.S. lawmakers.
Trump has said, “Whoever wins the AI race wins everything.” U.S. officials worry that if China gains an advantage in AI, its military and surveillance capabilities would be greatly enhanced.
U.S. advantage relies heavily on American companies such as Nvidia and their partnerships with manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces more than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chips.
Since 2022, the United States has imposed multiple export controls to prevent the most advanced technology from flowing to China. The U.S.
government says these measures help maintain American competitive advantage and protect national security.
As a result, companies such as Nvidia have been largely shut out of the world’s most profitable market. Jensen Huang has said Nvidia’s share of the Chinese market has fallen from about 95 percent to nearly zero.
Jensen Huang has shuttled between Washington and Beijing in diplomatic efforts to find a path back into the Chinese market with U.S. government approval.
Along the way, he has also influenced U.S. policy toward China.
The Sunday revelations may explain why Jensen Huang has not yet secured Nvidia’s most important goal: Trump administration approval to sell all chips to China except the most advanced models.
Jensen Huang was born in Taiwan in 1963 and moved to the U.S. West Coast at age nine.
He earned an electrical engineering degree from Oregon State University and a master’s degree in the same field from Stanford University.
He later worked at chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) before co-founding Nvidia. In Taiwan he is known as “Papa Huang” and has been called the “Taylor Swift of tech.” He is known as a workaholic and perfectionist with very high demands on employees.
Stephen Witt, author of the biography The Thinking Machine, told the BBC: “Jensen Huang is a technology visionary on par with Steve Jobs.” He added that Huang shaped the AI hardware we know today.
Jensen Huang’s ties to Trump are well known. At a recent White House AI summit attended by 42 technology executives, Elon Musk and Jensen Huang sat on either side of Trump.
Trump told reporters: “I only know he is a very good person, but you never know what’s going on behind the scenes.” He also said Jensen Huang “has made tremendous contributions to our country.”
Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang and two other electrical engineers, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem. The company was first known for graphics processing chips, especially those used in computer games.
Jensen Huang has more than once pulled Nvidia back from the brink of bankruptcy. He made an early bet on artificial intelligence before other companies invested in it, building much of the underlying infrastructure almost from scratch.
Witt told the BBC: “When we talk about this infrastructure today, we think of giant data centers, but none of that existed then. The product he was developing had no customers.
In fact, his first customer was OpenAI, which had only 30 employees. He even gave them the product for free.”
Today, nearly all major technology companies developing AI tools and infrastructure, including Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft, use Nvidia chips.
Nvidia’s board does not appear eager to replace Jensen Huang. On Sunday the board issued a statement expressing confidence in “Jensen Huang and his leadership team.”
Jensen Huang, 63, has no public succession plan. He has repeatedly said he hopes to remain in his role for decades.
Bloomberg reports that he has built an informal leadership structure around himself that differs from traditional corporate hierarchies.
His children, Spencer Huang and Madison Huang, and his son-in-law, Nico Caprez, all hold senior positions at Nvidia.
Jensen Huang met his future wife, Lori Mills, in the early 1980s while studying electrical engineering at Oregon State University, where they were lab partners.
The couple married in 1985, about eight years before Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia. They have one son and one daughter, Spencer and Madison.
In 2007 the couple established the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation. As Nvidia’s share price soared, the charitable foundation’s assets have grown sharply in recent years and are estimated to be worth more than $9 billion.
Witt told the BBC that Jensen Huang has invested considerable effort in cultivating an image as a devoted family man, adding: “This matters to him a great deal.”
“The consequences of this are bad for any family. But for someone who has worked so hard to project the image of a family man and maintain very close relationships with his children, the situation is especially bad.”
BBC reporters Tom McArthur in London, Ayeshea Perera and Tessa Wong in Singapore, and Helen Davidson in Sydney contributed reporting.
This article was originally written in English. We used artificial intelligence to assist with translation, and a BBC journalist reviewed it before publication.
