Shares in artificial-intelligence giant Nvidia tumbled over 5% Monday after CEO Jensen Huang admitted to an affair with a woman, allegedly later recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to spy on him. Veteran counterintelligence analysts said such an operation fits Beijing’s long-running playbook, and that its target may have been Washington’s chip policy, not necessarily Nvidia’s technology.
In an internal email published on Sunday, Huang apologized to his family and colleagues for his infidelities, and while Nvidia’s board has opened an independent investigation, Huang remains CEO. The board says it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised in his extramarital relationship.
The pair were photographed at a Taipei bar in June 2024 and again outside a Taipei restaurant a year later, with more candid photos of the couple, from Hong Kong to California, appearing on social media over the past few days.
The woman in question is Alice Huang, a.k.a. Huang Le, a former executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed – the two are not related. Her alleged goal was to persuade the Nvidia CEO to find ways of circumventing sanctions and export controls, making the U.S.’ most advanced chips available to China.
The New York Times and Financial Times reported that she was recruited by the Ministry of State Security (MSS) to spy in early 2026, with US agencies reportedly watching her since then, but officials did not believe the Nvidia CEO had any suspicions of his mistress having ulterior motives.
Megaspeed’s Malaysian subsidiary, Speedmatrix, has bought about $4.8 billion of Nvidia equipment starting in 2024, the size of purchase that would explain how the two got to meet, and being based in Singapore, gave cover to any suspicions of the company smuggling restricted tech into China, or even being a front for the Chinese government.
Multiple reports state that President Donald Trump was briefed on the matter almost a year ago but took no action. So far no one has been charged.
In light of the latest revelations, Trump told Reuters Monday, “I think he’s an honorable guy,” and that Huang had “done an amazing job for our country,” going so far as to say he would take Huang on his trip to China next week, where Trump expects to meet President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Shenzhen.
Dennis Molinaro, an expert on Chinese influence and intelligence operations, and author of Under Assault: Interference and Espionage in China’s Secret War Against Canada, reads Huang Le as a recruited source rather than an intelligence officer. A business relationship, he told MBN in a written response, justified regular contact, the kind where “nothing classified needs to change hands.”
Nicholas Eftimmiades, a retired senior intelligence officer and Atlantic Council fellow who tracks Chinese espionage cases, said stealing chip designs would have been a poor reason to approach a CEO.
“There’s a saying in espionage that you never recruit the general when you can recruit the secretary,” he said. Instead, he thinks the likely aim was to learn who at Nvidia and in the US government supported or opposed chip sales to China.
Molinaro likewise said that Beijing planting a source close to Jenson Huang would show focus not only on the hardware, but “export controls and the policy debate in Washington.”
The NYT also reported U.S. intelligence had found that Megaspeed built data centers across Southeast Asia and rented computing power to Alibaba, a workaround for Chinese firms to reach advanced compute, alongside U.S. chips swapped in transit.
According to Eftimiades, the alleged espionage fits a pattern he has tracked for years: Beijing’s intelligence service working through people with a natural reason to be near a target, and the relationships run long.
“We’ve had marriages,” he said, referring to a former French intelligence station chief who wed the ambassador’s interpreter after a posting in Beijing, He was recalled in 1998 after the affair and later convicted of passing secrets.
“It is an attack by a whole of society against the society,” said Eftimiades, “not just against the CIA or the FBI.”
On Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun called the “Chinese spy” allegations unsubstantiated smears. MBN contacted the Chinese Embassy in Washington for comment but had not received a response by publication time.
The chairs of the House China, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees have asked Jensen Huang for a closed-door briefing on Nov. 18, as lawmakers must determine whether national security was put at risk by Huang’s infidelities.
Nvidia has not yet confirmed whether he will attend.
Eftimiades made clear that no one has alleged Huang has broken any law, and that the only clear failure is Nvidia’s: “If Jensen Huang is guilty of one thing, he’s guilty of not exercising the type of caution that he should.” He calls the board probe “a worthless exercise,” and expects little from Congress.
