Jensen Huang's Chinese Lover May Not Have Spied On Nvidia: Report

Some officials argue that the focus on Huang's ties to the Chinese government has distracted from a bigger issue, which is Washington's failure to stop advanced technology, critical to the AI race, from being diverted to China.

13 Nov 2026, 07:11 · NDTV

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Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia CEO amid revelations of extramarital affairs
One affair involved Alice Huang, linked by US intelligence to possible Chinese spying
US officials remain divided on evidence of Alice Huang acting as a Chinese spy

How will Nvidia's business be affected by this scandal?
Washington:

For 33 years, Jensen Huang built the chips that taught machines to think. It took one scandal to show that the human heart still runs on far less reliable hardware. Huang resigned as Nvidia's chief executive amid revelations of at least three extramarital affairs, one involving a woman accused of being a spy for China. Huang admitted to an affair, reportedly with Alice Huang, a senior executive at Singapore-based data centre company Megaspeed.

An earlier US intelligence memo reportedly alleged she was an asset of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), even as Beijing rejected the allegation. Nvidia sold the picks and shovels of the AI gold rush, and this week it lost its founder to a much older kind of gold-digging story, minus, so far, any proof of the spy part.

No Definitive China Link

According to a new CNN report, US intelligence collected on Jensen Huang's Chinese paramour so far does not prove that she was acting as a spy for Beijing.

Citing sources, the report suggested that there is disagreement among US officials about the strength of the evidence that Alice Huang was recruited by MSS, the Chinese equivalent of the CIA, to spy on Nvidia boss and, by extension, on US policymakers.

US intelligence has been investigating the Megaspeed executive's affair with Nvidia boss for at least a year, but US Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday said that there are still "no conclusions reached by the Department of Justice, or by me, or by [FBI] Director Patel around who she is or is not."

US President Donald Trump also stood on the fence about Alice Huang's China links when asked whether Jensen Huang was right to have stepped down as CEO.

"Well, the big thing is, was the woman a spy? And I don't know if that's been determined yet. But if the woman was a spy, yes. If the woman was not a spy, perhaps it would be different," she said.

Now, sources have told CNN that some officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence don't believe that the framing of Alice Huang as a Chinese spy was entirely accurate and it was over-torqued.

Officials at the CIA were also reportedly not yet convinced that the intelligence collection on Huang to date, including intercepted communications, proves she was knowingly giving information to Beijing.

Alice Huang's China Crime

Some Trump officials, however, told CNN that it is hard to believe Alice Huang wasn't working as an agent of the Chinese government, given that she is a prominent Chinese businesswoman working with one of America's most powerful companies.

Chinese national security law allows the state to compel its citizens to help collect intelligence for the Chinese Communist Party. Even if she hadn't yet done so, her proximity to Jensen Huang, and through him to Trump, led some officials to see her as a clear counterintelligence risk.

The US Failure

Others argue that the focus on Huang's ties to the Chinese government has distracted from a bigger issue, which is Washington's failure to stop advanced technology, critical to the AI race, from being diverted to China.

On Chinese espionage, perception varies widely. Some officials think the fears are exaggerated, while others suspect a spy behind every interaction.

"A lot of these people are guilty of just being Chinese," a former senior counterintelligence official said.

Alice Huang's Singapore-based firm, Megaspeed, is a major buyer of NVIDIA chips. According to a person briefed on the matter, the Justice and Commerce Departments opened an investigation into the company in 2024, as part of a wider probe into foreign shell companies suspected of funnelling restricted Nvidia chips to China.

A person familiar with the matter said officials inside the White House are now asking why Commerce did not add Megaspeed to the "entity list", which restricts trade with companies that may threaten US national security or foreign policy interests, at least while the investigation was under way.

A former Commerce Department official told CNN that no intelligence operation was needed to bring about that outcome, pointing out that Jensen Huang has openly urged the US to sell more chips to China. The possible diversion of chips to China through Megaspeed, the official said, was in theory a point where Chinese and Nvidia interests already overlapped, and "a regulatory loophole" already permitted it.

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