Nvidia's board of directors has opened an independent investigation into its founder and chief executive, Jensen Huang, after reports that he was the target of a foreign intelligence operation, in a crisis that has shaken the world's most valuable chipmaker and raised questions at the heart of the global artificial intelligence boom.
The board announced the inquiry on Sunday, saying a committee of independent directors, assisted by outside independent counsel, would oversee it. In its statement, the board said it had "no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised", but added that its inquiry would "examine all available information". Huang, 63, will remain chief executive while the investigation runs, and the board said it had confidence in him and his leadership team.
The announcement came on the same day Huang acknowledged in a message to staff that he had been romantically involved with a businesswoman whom United States intelligence agencies had identified as working for Beijing. According to reports by The New York Times, Huang told the board about the relationship, apologised to employees and took responsibility for his actions. Nvidia later published the email he sent to staff.
The woman is Alice Huang — no relation to the chief executive — a Chinese citizen and senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-headquartered data centre company that is one of Nvidia's major chip buyers. Megaspeed, spun off from a Chinese gaming company in 2023, rents computing power built on Nvidia chips to Alibaba and other Chinese firms.
The New York Times reported in October that US intelligence agencies had concluded, on the basis of electronic surveillance, that Alice Huang had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security, the country's main civilian intelligence agency, and was passing information to Beijing. The newspaper reported that she had been tasked with pressing Jensen Huang to lobby Washington for looser limits on sales of advanced AI chips to China. She did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment.
The scrutiny of Megaspeed began after a US Commerce Department official visited one of the company's data centres in Malaysia in late 2024 and noticed Nvidia chips sitting unopened in boxes, according to the Times. US authorities have since been examining whether Megaspeed helped Beijing gain access to advanced AI chips that are barred from shipment to China, and the Justice Department has taken over a federal investigation into the company.
The affair and the intelligence findings were serious enough to reach the highest levels of the US government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the drafting of a highly classified memo this spring warning senior Trump administration officials about Huang's relationship with Alice Huang. The memo reached officials before President Donald Trump's visit to China in May, the Times reported, citing people briefed on the matter.
The Financial Times also reported on the relationship, and Republican leaders of three House committees have now asked Huang to appear at a closed-door briefing this month, adding a congressional dimension to a crisis that already spans the boardroom, the intelligence community and the Justice Department.
Nvidia also faces questions about its own dealings with Megaspeed. The Times reported that the company continued selling chips to Megaspeed after the newspaper disclosed a Commerce Department investigation into whether the customer was helping to move restricted AI chips into China.
The stakes could hardly be higher. Nvidia's chips sit at the centre of the AI revolution, and the company — worth nearly $4.5 trillion and, as of Friday, the world's second-largest publicly traded company — has regularly beaten Wall Street's expectations, reporting quarterly profits of $59.69 billion in August. Any suggestion that its chief executive was compromised touches not only the company but the US government's controls on the technology Washington considers most strategically sensitive.
For now, the board has given no timeline for its investigation and has said only that it will provide further updates "as appropriate". What it finds — and what Congress and the Justice Department uncover in their own inquiries — will determine whether this remains a personal failing by one of the tech industry's most celebrated leaders, or becomes a far larger story about the security of the chips powering the age of artificial intelligence.
