Nvidia's board of directors has launched an independent investigation into reports that co-founder and chief executive Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence operation, the company said on Sunday, in a disclosure that has put the world's most valuable artificial intelligence company under an extraordinary spotlight.
A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside legal counsel, will oversee the inquiry. In a statement, the board said it had "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised," but added that the investigation "will examine all available information." The board also expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team, and said Huang supports the review and has agreed to cooperate. He remains chief executive while the probe runs.
On the same day, Huang, 63, told Nvidia staff in an email that he had been unfaithful to his wife. He apologised to his family and to the company, saying he had let his family down and fallen short of his responsibility. He did not name the other person in the message, which Nvidia later made public.
At the centre of the reports is Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a Chinese citizen and former senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data-centre company spun off from a Chinese gaming firm in 2023. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have reported that United States officials concluded she had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security and was passing information to Beijing, and that she was tasked with pushing Huang to lobby Washington for looser limits on sales of advanced AI chips to China. The allegations have not been tested in court, and no charges have been announced.
The Times also reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the drafting of a highly classified memo in the spring of 2025 warning senior administration officials about Huang's close relationship with Alice Huang, ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to China in May. United States agencies, including the Commerce and Justice Departments, have been examining Megaspeed and its possible ties to the Chinese government for more than a year, according to people familiar with the matter. Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs has said no such investigation was conducted into Alice Huang, and the Chinese Embassy in Washington has rejected the spying allegations.
The political pressure is building. On Thursday, the Republican chairmen of three powerful House panels — Foreign Affairs, the Chinese Communist Party committee and Intelligence — wrote to Huang asking him to appear before them to answer questions about his dealings with Megaspeed and Nvidia's safeguards against foreign espionage. Senator John Cornyn said on Sunday that a congressional oversight investigation was needed.
The stakes are enormous. As of Friday, Nvidia was the world's second-largest publicly traded company, worth nearly $4.5 trillion, and its chips power the data centres behind the global AI boom. Analysts say the investigation will hang over the share price as investors question whether Huang will stay at the helm of the company he helped found. Nvidia says it has reviewed every graphics processor shipped to Megaspeed and found no evidence any were illegally diverted to China. The board has given no timeline for completing its inquiry and says it will provide updates only as appropriate. This article is not financial advice.
Sources: CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Reuters.
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