Nvidia Board Opens Investigation After Jensen Huang Admits Affair Amid China Spy Report

Nvidia's board of directors said Sunday that it is opening an independent investigation into reports that the chip giant's president and CEO, Jensen Huang, was the target of a foreign intelligence effort - and Huang, in an email to staff reported by CNBC, admitted to an extramarital affair and apologized to his family and his company, the Daily Caller reports. A committee of independent directors, assisted by independent counsel, will conduct the inquiry.

The board was explicit about what it does and does not believe at this point. 'While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board's inquiry will examine all available information,' the board said, expressing confidence in Huang and his leadership and promising updates as appropriate. Huang, 63, pledged to cooperate. '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,' he wrote, according to CNBC, adding: 'I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America's national security.' He remains CEO.

The reporting underneath the board's move is an allegation, and it is carried here as one. The New York Times has reported that Huang's affair was with Alice Huang - no relation - an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company that the Times says has bought more than $4.8 billion in Nvidia chips since June 2024, making it one of Nvidia's biggest customers in Southeast Asia. According to the Times, a highly classified memo prepared in the spring of 2025 warned top Trump administration policymakers that U.S. officials believed Ms. Huang had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to learn more about American-made AI chips and, possibly, to influence Nvidia's position on where the most advanced chips are made; American authorities also reportedly suspected her of smuggling such chips to China. Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the drafting of the memo, the Times reported. No charges have been announced against anyone in the reporting read this cycle, and the memo itself is not public.

Washington is already moving. Republican chairs of House committees have asked Huang to appear at a closed-door briefing on November 18, the day after Nvidia's earnings, according to summaries of the CNBC reporting read this run, and Democrats have separately called for investigations or testimony. President Trump, asked about Huang on Sunday, told reporters he would 'certainly take' him on an upcoming trip to China. 'I haven't heard he's done anything wrong,' Trump said, according to the Times. 'He dealt with somebody, but you know, so does everybody else.' For Houston readers the stakes are not abstract: Nvidia's chips sit inside the data centers spreading across Harris County and the Gulf Coast, and what the board's inquiry finds - about a CEO, a customer, and the security of the world's most wanted technology - will land in an industry this region is betting heavily on.