Image source: AFP via Getty Images
US President Donald Trump said that the FBI is investigating the relationship between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and an alleged Chinese spy, in a case that is expected to have widespread repercussions in the United States and abroad.
Trump confirmed that he spoke to Huang on Monday after reports that the United States believed he was the target of a Chinese spy operation, telling reporters: “I asked him, ‘Did you have any idea she was a spy?’ He said, ‘I had no idea she was a spy,’ and I really believe him.”
Trump said he believes Huang is "an honorable man" and that he feels very confident that he "will be in a good position" after the investigations, adding: "I hope there will be no problem. I think he is suffering a lot."
Trump's statements represent the first indication that the head of Nvidia knew about the connection between the woman with whom he was in a relationship and Chinese espionage activities against the United States.
Trump has raised concerns that allowing China to lead in artificial intelligence would significantly enhance Beijing's military and surveillance capabilities.
The president expressed his "certainty" that Chinese leader Xi Jinping "will ask me about this" in the next meeting.
Beijing has rejected US allegations about targeting the Nvidia president, and the Foreign Ministry said that these allegations are “completely baseless and are mere speculation aimed at tarnishing China’s reputation and image.”
In a reaction from NVIDIA, it confirmed that it has no reason to believe that the company's secrets or national security have been compromised. However, there is an independent investigation into the company into its president, Huang, 63 years old, who has been running it for 30 years and is considered its distinctive icon.
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Nvidia is the second most expensive company in the world after Apple, and its value exceeds trillions of dollars. It designs precise computer chips that have become essential in artificial intelligence technology.
But news of the spying allegations caused its value to drop by about $250 billion on Monday, with the company's stock losing more than 4 percent of its value.
Trump did not reveal details about the investigation into the allegations or its start date. The FBI declined to comment or respond to BBC inquiries.
According to a New York Times report, US intelligence officials believe that Alice Huang, also known as Huang Li, was a spy working for Beijing, even though she is not related to Jensen Huang.
Nvidia is investigating its president's relationship with a Chinese businesswoman suspected of being linked to espionage
How did NVIDIA become the most expensive technology company in the world?
Image source: Reuters
Memorandum and lawsuit
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a memo to senior officials in Washington last spring, warning that the head of Nvidia had a close relationship with a Chinese spy, according to the New York Times.
Alice Huang, 43, works as a managing director for Singaporean data center company MegaSpeed, which has had dealings with Nvidia.
Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia, which plays a major role in the artificial intelligence technology race between the United States and China, and Washington treats its exports of microchips to Beijing as a matter of national security, which was the main reason behind the growing concerns in Huang’s case.
The reports prompted a class-action lawsuit to be filed against Huang and Nvidia in California on Monday, accusing him of defrauding shareholders by concealing Huang's relationship with the suspected Chinese spy.
The lawsuit said the company lied to the media about Nvidia President Jensen Huang's relationship with Chinese Alice Huang, "who is suspected of seeking to help smuggle Nvidia products into China."
The BBC contacted Nvidia to respond to what was stated in the proposed lawsuit.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admits to having an affair with a suspected Chinese spy
As for Megaseed, the situation was quiet at its headquarters in Singapore's central business district, and work was continuing on Tuesday.
The BBC was denied access to the company's floor, but spoke to a staff member by phone, who said he had no comment and referred all inquiries to the company's public relations team.
The BBC also emailed Megaspeed several times seeking comment on the spying allegations.
"unfaithful"
On the other hand, Huang admitted that he had been "unfaithful" to his wife and apologized for hurting her and their children.
He said on Monday that he was "committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America's national security" and would cooperate with the investigation launched by the company.
Huang has also been asked to attend a joint closed briefing of several congressional committees next week, but it is not clear whether he will attend.
A letter from Congress said the briefing would be "about the company's security protocols against hostile foreign espionage, and your interactions with a publicly reported PRC intelligence asset: Megaspeed CEO Alice Huang."
Nvidia declined to comment on the summons, and the BBC also contacted the relevant committees.
Some of the workers the BBC spoke to at Nvidia's headquarters in Santa Clara on Monday said that business was going on as usual, despite the intense attention the company was receiving.
NVIDIA has been operating in the United States for decades, and was founded by Huang with other engineers in 1993, but recently it has achieved a significant rise to become one of the most valuable and powerful companies in the world.
The company was initially designing computer chips for gaming, but its decision to shift its focus to developing artificial intelligence turned it into the powerhouse it is today.
Its chips have become so valuable to the development of artificial intelligence that the White House previously imposed restrictions on where its advanced products could be sold.
Its H200 processor, the company's second most advanced semiconductor, was previously subject to restrictions over concerns that it would give the Chinese technology industry an advantage over the United States.
But Huang has long opposed restricting sales to China, arguing that the global spread of AI would be better off driven by American technology.
In January, the Trump administration said it would allow the company to sell its H200 chips to Chinese customers under certain conditions.
Nvidia's most advanced AI semiconductors, including the GB200 Blackwell superchip, are still banned from the Chinese market.
Repercussions at home and abroad
This case represents the latest episode of the fierce competition between the United States and China in the technology and artificial intelligence sector, in a way that technology, geopolitics, and national security intersect.
President Trump believes that “whoever decides the race with artificial intelligence will prevail,” and it will ultimately be the most powerful in the world. And he may be right, according to Zoe Kleinman, technology and artificial intelligence editor.
Since Nvidia is one of the best chip manufacturers in the field of artificial intelligence, and there is huge demand for its products, it controls its prices. Prices for one unit of its latest data center equipment start at $50,000, and a medium or large site may contain hundreds of its units.
There are hints that Alice Huang's company, Megaspeed, was involved in smuggling these technologies to China during her time in office.
Bloomberg reported that the company purchased technologies from Nvidia worth billions of dollars in November 2025. Megaspeed denies using them illegally.
The interest in economic espionage is not new and is not limited to China alone, but if Beijing obtains large enough numbers of Nvidia chips to use them, or take them apart and learn how to make its own copies, it will anger the Trump administration, which is trying to keep its artificial intelligence technology secret.
There are other doubts about the possibility of the company's president obtaining information related to national security, especially since he deals with the American elite, and he is one of the few who can enter the White House without warning and have tea with Trump, and he also has wide influence.
Huang says he will cooperate with the company's investigation, expressing his desire to keep his job, knowing that he has violated, at a minimum, Nvidia's code of conduct, which stipulates that company members may not establish relationships with customers, and that he must bear the consequences of his actions.
Ironically, Huang is known as a strict and demanding manager, who expects his employees to work long hours and efficiently. There are stories about him holding general meetings with all employees to reprimand those who made mistakes, justifying this by preventing others from repeating the same mistakes, but it is impossible to imagine the pain felt by those who received the reprimand.
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