Nvidia chief admits relationship with suspected Chinese spy: “I owe my family and all of you an apology”
Jensen Huang, who co-founded one of the world’s most valuable companies and has run it ever since, remains in charge. His board and the White House are standing by him. Congress wants answers.
On October 29, Jensen Huang still spoke of her as a customer. In an interview with Bloomberg, the Nvidia chief said his dealings with Alice Huang had been related to Megaspeed, the company she worked for, and were “completely normal and not unusual.” Ten days later, on Sunday, November 8, he sent employees a letter that opened with the words: “I owe my family and all of you an apology.”
“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 63-year-old Nvidia founder wrote. The letter does not name the woman. The New York Times does: according to the paper, Huang acknowledged to the company’s board that he had been intimate with Alice Huang, whom U.S. intelligence agencies regard as an agent of Chinese intelligence.
The board announced an independent investigation the same day. It will be run by the independent directors with the help of outside counsel, and Huang, according to company spokesman John Rizzo, will have no say in choosing the lawyers. The board said it had “no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised,” but that its inquiry “will examine all available information.” Huang remains at the helm. “Today’s news will not slow Nvidia,” Rizzo said.
Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, is a Chinese citizen and no relation to Jensen Huang. According to the Times, she worked in China as a television reporter and at several major banks, and in 2023 was listed as managing director of Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center operator spun off from a Chinese gaming company. Megaspeed grew into one of Nvidia’s largest customers in Southeast Asia: by the paper’s count, it has bought more than $4.8 billion worth of chips since June 2024. The U.S. Commerce Department is examining whether the company helped move AI accelerators into China despite export restrictions. Nvidia maintains that those suspicions were “thoroughly investigated and debunked.”
U.S. intelligence agencies, the Times reports, began watching Alice Huang more than a year ago as part of the Megaspeed inquiry and discovered she was corresponding with an American citizen. He turned out to be the head of Nvidia. This spring, according to the paper, a classified memo prepared under the supervision of Secretary of State Marco Rubio concluded that China’s Ministry of State Security had recruited her to get close to Huang. The Wall Street Journal later reported that officials in at least three countries have concerns about her. The Chinese embassy in Washington called the allegations “groundless smears and slanders.” The evidence behind the intelligence findings has not been made public.
President Donald Trump, according to the Times, learned of the surveillance about a year ago and did nothing. On Sunday, speaking to reporters in Florida, he came to Huang’s defense. “I haven’t heard he’s done anything wrong,” the paper quotes him as saying. Trump said he would “certainly take him” on his upcoming trip to China, called him “an honorable guy” who “has done an amazing job for our country,” and, asked whether Huang should stay on as chief executive, replied: “I think so. Oh yes, sure.”
Capitol Hill sees it differently. The Republican chairs of three House committees, Brian Mast of Foreign Affairs, Rick Crawford of Intelligence and John Moolenaar of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, have asked Huang for a closed-door briefing on November 18. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said back in October that Huang and the company’s board “owe Congress answers.”
Republican Michael McCaul, vice chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, called the episode “a classic move from the CCP’s playbook” and urged a pause in shipments of advanced AI chips to China.
In recent years Huang has been the most visible advocate of easing export controls, telling the Trump administration that if American chips are kept out of China, Chinese manufacturers will simply take the market. According to Axios, citing the Times, Alice Huang was recruited in part to press for Chinese access to Nvidia’s most advanced chips.
Huang has been married since 1985. He met Lori at Oregon State University, where she was among only three women in an engineering lab of 250 students. Younger than his classmates after skipping ahead in school and, by his own account, looking like a child, he made sure he landed in her lab group and proposed that they do homework together every Sunday, promising her straight A’s. Another promise, to be running a company by the age of 30, he kept in 1993, when he co-founded Nvidia. He has said more than once that his wife made it all possible. Huang’s son and daughter now work at Nvidia, and his son-in-law works in business development there.
Sunday’s letter to employees also contains these lines: “Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty.”
