Nvidia: board opens probe after Jensen Huang admits affair with client CEO

Nvidia’s board of directors has opened an independent investigation after chief executive Jensen Huang admitted, in an internal message to staff, to an extramarital relationship with Alice Huang. She runs Megaspeed, one of the chipmaker’s major clients in Asia, and is suspected of working for Chinese intelligence.

The affair has hit the world’s leading supplier of artificial intelligence chips, a company valued at more than $4 trillion. Nvidia shares fell 8% at the Wall Street opening, wiping out roughly $250 billion of market value.

Admission to employees

In his message to staff, the 63-year-old executive did not try to soften what he had done. Alice Huang shares his surname but is not related to him.

“I cheated on my wife. There is no excuse for what I did, and I am deeply sorry. I take full responsibility for my actions and the criticism that has followed.”

Board cites national security

The board said the investigation will establish whether Nvidia’s chief executive was the target of “foreign intelligence efforts”. It said its priority is “the national and economic security of the United States, which is fundamental to the interests of Nvidia and its shareholders.”

Directors also said there is no conclusive evidence so far that sensitive technology secrets were leaked.

Beijing rejects the accusations

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the allegations. Its spokesperson called them “baseless speculation and pure defamation”.

$4.8 billion in chip purchases

Megaspeed began as a Chinese gaming company called 7Road. It later became a Singapore-based cloud computing provider.

Between June 2024 and February 2026, the company allegedly bought $4.8 billion worth of advanced Nvidia AI chips through its subsidiary Speedmatrix to equip data centres in Malaysia. Investment research sources have named the Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba as the ultimate beneficiary of that infrastructure, a claim that has fed US suspicions of a plan to move sensitive technology to China.

Alice Huang’s background includes reported work as a television reporter in China’s Hunan province and at China Central Television (CCTV). She later moved into finance at HSBC and at Hexi Capital, a technology investment fund, before taking the helm of the Singapore data company.

Lobbying on export rules

The relationship coincided with Huang’s lobbying in Washington to ease export restrictions on advanced chips. He has met President Donald Trump at least seven times since the start of his second term.

Those talks produced arrangements allowing Nvidia to sell advanced chips such as the H200 to China. In return, the US government receives up to 25% of the revenue.

The crisis also exposes Nvidia’s financial commitments across the sector. The company has guaranteed projects worth $300 billion and invested billions in companies including Intel and SpaceX. It has also provided $100 billion in guarantees for a giant data centre being developed by OpenAI and SoftBank in Ohio. Nvidia has no clear succession plan for Huang.