Nvidia board opens probe into Huang's affair with suspected China spy
The chipmaker's directors say they still back their chief executive after a New York Times report tied his partner to Chinese intelligence.
Nvidia's board said on Sunday it had opened a review into chief executive Jensen Huang after a New York Times report that his romantic partner was a woman US intelligence officers believe was recruited by Chinese spy services. The board said it retained "confidence in Jensen and his leadership team", according to BBC News.
Huang, 63, confirmed the relationship in a statement: "I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry."
The Times reported that US officials had concluded that Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was recruited by China's main intelligence agency. She was a senior executive at Megaspeed, a data centre company based in Singapore that had itself been suspected of helping route Nvidia chips into China, a concern Nvidia says was investigated and found to be unfounded.
According to the BBC, surveillance picked up communications between Alice Huang and an American citizen who was later identified as Jensen Huang through a process known as "unmasking". It is not clear what information she is alleged to have passed to Beijing, how valuable it was, or when the alleged collection began. Alice Huang did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment.
France 24 reported that Beijing denied the claim. A spokesperson for Nvidia told the BBC the company had no knowledge of intelligence concerns: "We trust that if we were the target of a genuine threat, the US government would have notified us."
Huang's place at the centre of the US-China technology contest gives the affair weight beyond the company. Nvidia, which he co-founded in 1993 with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, is worth about $4.5tn and dominates the market for the processors used to train artificial intelligence models. Washington has used export controls since 2022 to keep its most advanced chips out of China. Huang has said Nvidia's share of the Chinese market fell from about 95% to effectively zero.
President Donald Trump, who appeared alongside Huang and Elon Musk at a White House AI summit attended by 42 technology executives, told reporters he had not spoken to the Nvidia chief since news of the investigation broke. "I just know he's a fine person, but you never know what's going on," Trump said, adding that Huang had "done an amazing job for our country".
BBC sources said removing Huang was unlikely because of the sums at stake and because there is no clear successor. Huang was born in Taiwan in 1963 and moved to the United States at nine. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index puts his fortune at $155bn.
How the reports differ
The BBC built its account around the board's statement of support and Trump's remarks, and it was alone in carrying Nvidia's statement that the company had not been told of any intelligence concern. France 24 led with Beijing's denial of the espionage claim, which the BBC report does not mention. NDTV and The Indian Express filed profiles rather than news: NDTV on Huang's rise and his leather jacket, The Indian Express on how he met his wife Lori. The New York Times reporting is the origin of the allegations in every account, and the BBC alone noted that Alice Huang did not answer the newspaper's request for comment.
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