Nvidia’s board of directors opened an independent investigation on Sunday into whether co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation, after the 63-year-old executive told employees in an email that he had an extramarital affair with a businesswoman U.S. intelligence agencies suspect is a Chinese spy.
The woman, Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, is affiliated with Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud company and Nvidia customer that has been accused of helping restricted Chinese companies acquire Nvidia artificial intelligence chips, CNBC reported, citing The New York Times and the Financial Times. U.S. intelligence agencies have expressed concerns that Alice Huang was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to gather information on American AI technology, potentially influence Nvidia to make advanced processors available to Chinese customers, and pass information to Beijing.
In his Sunday message to Nvidia staff, Jensen Huang apologized to his family and the company and said the board had opened an inquiry into the spying allegations. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did,” Jensen Huang wrote in the email. “I am deeply sorry.”
An Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement reported by CNET that “Jensen is committed to continuing to lead Nvidia as CEO without interruption” and pledged that he would cooperate fully with the board’s inquiry.
What the Board Investigation Covers
Nvidia’s board of directors said a committee of independent directors, working alongside outside legal counsel, will oversee “an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”
“While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board’s inquiry will examine all available information,” the board said in its statement. According to The Times of India, neither Alice Huang nor Megaspeed has been charged with a crime, and Jensen Huang and Alice Huang are not related.
The investigation puts the leader of the world’s top AI chipmaker under both internal corporate review and congressional scrutiny days before Nvidia’s third-quarter earnings report on Nov. 17. The allegations arrive as Nvidia sits at the center of a U.S.-China trade dispute over AI hardware, even as the company posted $81.6 billion in revenue earlier in 2026 despite export curbs.
Megaspeed Ties and Chip Export Controls
The U.S. government first banned sales of Nvidia’s most advanced AI processors to China in 2022 under the Biden administration, though it has approved exports of certain older, slower models. President Donald Trump relaxed restrictions on certain processors in 2025 following lobbying by Jensen Huang, who has argued that it is better for the United States if the world builds on American technology and has aligned with Trump on domestic AI policy and infrastructure buildout. In his Sunday note to staff, Jensen Huang added that he was proud and grateful to be an American.
Nvidia representatives previously said Megaspeed had already been investigated for evading U.S. export controls. Before Sunday’s admission, Nvidia had defended its business with the Singapore cloud firm and described Jensen Huang’s contact with Alice Huang as not unusual or unexpected because the CEO “talks with thousands of customer executives every year.”
In an Oct. 29 interview with Bloomberg reported by The American Bazaar, Jensen Huang said Nvidia’s relationship with Megaspeed was normal and that Nvidia had inspected Megaspeed’s graphics processing unit deployments to ensure processors were not being illegally diverted to China.
Congressional Briefing Demand and Next Deadlines
Three House Republican committee chairs—Reps. John Moolenaar of the Select Committee on China, Brian Mast of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rick Crawford of the Intelligence Committee—sent a letter to Jensen Huang asking him to sit for a closed-door congressional briefing on Nov. 18. In the letter, Moolenaar wrote that recent reporting raised serious national security questions about Beijing’s access to sensitive American technology and that Congress needed to determine whether U.S. national security had been put at risk.
Lawmakers gave Jensen Huang until Wednesday, Nov. 11, to confirm whether he will attend the Nov. 18 closed-door session, according to The Times of India, which also reported that Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren renewed her call for the CEO to testify before Congress. Beijing previously called claims that it was spying on Nvidia groundless, and the Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. Following the Nov. 17 earnings report and the requested Nov. 18 briefing, Nvidia is scheduled to hold a major conference in Washington, D.C., at the end of November.