Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is being investigated by his own company over an extramarital affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy. The woman is Alice Huang (no relation), former CEO of a Singapore-based data centre company. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
The news goes far beyond a family scandal — it sits at the crossroads of technology, geopolitics and national security. The US is locked in a fierce race with China to develop the best AI models. As US President Donald Trump puts it, "Whoever wins AI, wins." He believes the country with the more dominant AI technology will benefit most and ultimately become the most powerful in the world.
Nvidia makes the best chips in the business for AI, so much so that it has been overwhelmed with demand. A single unit of its latest kit for data centres starts at £37,000 ($50,000). A medium or large site might have hundreds of them.
The US administration initially slapped an export ban on Nvidia's more recent devices to prevent China from taking advantage of their superior capabilities. It has since softened the rules a little. But there are suggestions that Alice Huang's company, Megaspeed, may have been involved in sneaking them into the country while she was in charge. Bloomberg reported that the firm bought billions of dollars worth of Nvidia tech in November 2025. Megaspeed denies that it was used illegitimately.
Jensen Huang has lobbied heavily for the export rules between the two countries to be relaxed, arguing against the weight of general opinion that the AI race doesn't matter and that it would be no bad thing for China to become dependent on US tech. "President Trump wants America to win and President Xi wants China to win, and it's possible for both of them to do so," he told the BBC last year.
Nvidia shares tumbled over the investigation. The company now faces difficult questions: whether Alice gained special access to its latest technology, deliberately or not, via Jensen — and, if so, whether she shared it with Beijing or others. We don't know when their affair began or ended, but there are numerous photos and videos of Jensen and Alice together at events. China denies that she was engaged in espionage.
Interest in economic espionage is neither new nor unique to China. But many Western countries say that China does it on a grand scale, using a combination of technology tools and agents embedded in various organisations — including private companies. China having access to significant enough numbers of Nvidia's chips to make use of them, or stripping them down and learning how to make its own versions, would infuriate the Trump administration.
Another potential bombshell lies in the form of any national security information to which Jensen Huang may have been privy. He is a man operating at the very top of the US elite — one of a handful of people who could probably walk into the White House unannounced and have tea with Trump. He has influence, he has access and he has powerful friends. It's quite possible that secrets were shared with him.
Nvidia says there's no evidence so far that he passed anything on and the firm has launched an internal investigation. Huang says he will co-operate and wants to keep his job — though if nothing else, he has broken Nvidia's own code of conduct, which states that company members should not have relationships with clients. At present, he has the backing of both the Nvidia board and Trump, who described him as "honourable" and speculated that there must have been a reason for what had transpired.
Nvidia's share price has fallen but has not tanked spectacularly, suggesting shareholders are not abandoning the company under his stewardship in their droves either. An AI industry with a weakened Nvidia would undoubtedly be a slower one. And there isn't really a natural successor waiting in the wings to replace Jensen were he forced out. Huang has run Nvidia for more than 30 years — to many, he is Nvidia. He has steered it through multiple crises and it was his decision for the firm to focus on AI before it was trendy.