Inside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's affair with alleged Chinese spy

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang on Sunday admitted to having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy after his company launched an investigation into their relationship and after he has repeatedly and steadfastly denied any unusual ties with Alice Huang of no relation, saying their interactions were all business and completely normal. NVIDIA launched the probe following reports from the New York Times and the Financial Times that a secret U.S. memo overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio Warned months ago that Alice was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to spy on Nvidia. Huang's ex-mistress, Alice, is an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company that bought billions of dollars worth of chips from Nvidia. It's unclear how long the affair lasted, though the pair was pictured together in a Taipei bar back in 2024. It's a pretty big scandal for the company, which is one of the world's largest firms by market cap. They have a roughly 4.5 trillion dollar market value, though that has gone down slightly today. They are a leader in the semiconductor business, developing some of the most complex AI chips before their industry rivals, which helped them gain a lead in the global AI race. The surprising thing here is when you have an executive, whether it's a CEO or anyone else, at that level, with this kind of organization central to national security, it's one of the The board's purview. to make sure they're managing risk for that level of individual, asking the questions and making sure the controls are in place and the security apparatus is there to try and head off operations like these. You know, the hard part is when someone's up against a nation-state actor, there's a lot of wheels that are already in motion. I imagine this has been months, if not years, in the planning and the first step of any of these operations is reconnaissance, right? Learning about the individual, learning Learning about the organization. And look, this is one of the oldest plays in tradecraft. It's not surprising that this happened at all. Shares of the company have fallen nearly 5% so far today and as much as 8% earlier this morning, as investors are panicking over the possibility that Huang might be removed from the company. Though the investigation may find that he misled investors, considering the When the company repeatedly defended his relationship with Alice, it's It's pretty unimaginable for him to be removed from Nvidia. He co-founded the business when he was 30 years old and he's been leading it ever since, with about 60 direct reports today. He's also cultivated a pretty close relationship with President Trump over time, which is another key concern. Wang has repeatedly been invited to the White House as a guest. Most recently, he was sitting at the head table with his wife at a recent state dinner for Chinese leader Xi Jinping in September. Back in December 2025, President Trump approved the sale of advanced NVIDIA chips to China after Huang attended a Mar-a-Lago dinner for top dollar donors, according to the New York Times. NVIDIA later reportedly donated at least $20 million to Trump's White House ballroom project. But the export of these chips has been a key concern among lawmakers. Under the Biden administration, such sales were paused over national security fears, as some policymakers argued that China could use the chips to break ahead in the global AI race and possibly supercharge their military powers. It's going to be really hard to tell just how big this is until the congressional inquiries take place, the independent board investigation takes But it's pretty bad on the surface, right? And for a lot of people who are looking at this news, they're not surprised at all this happened. You have someone who is central to national security, central to what's happening in artificial intelligence. In a lot of ways, this is predictable, but the details have yet to come out. We're still going to all, I think, be staying tuned to see what really may have been put at risk. But even the most innocuous information in the wrong hands. can put an organization or a country at a substantial disadvantage. Think about negotiations, think about access to restricted ships in particular, which has been one of the stated objectives of a number of nation-state actors that can very much be at risk with this kind of incident. On Sunday, Huang sent an email to NVIDIA employees, but he started it by apologizing to his family for his marital infidelity. He's been married to his wife Lori for over 40 years, they first met as teenagers in a freshman engineering class at Oregon State University, and his two children and son-in-law are currently employed at NVIDIA.