The head of “Nvidia”, the worldʼs largest AI chip maker, cheated on his wife and, according to intelligence, the state — with a Chinese spy. Silicon Valley and the White House are shocked, but Trump says “everyone does it”

A woman in pink

On May 22, 2025, Jensen Huang had dinner with “Nvidia” partners at a Chinese restaurant in Taipei. Journalists were waiting for him outside the restaurant, photographers were filming the party through the windows and open doors.

A woman with long hair in a pink dress had been sniffing around Huang all evening. Huang hugged her, she kissed him on the cheek, and when he returned to the restaurant after talking to the journalists, she stroked his back with her hand.

At the end of the evening, they got into the same car. This woman is Alice Huang, a former director of one of the “Nvidia” largest Asian clients. At the time, these shots were of interest only to the tabloids.

Jensen loves publicity. He constantly takes pictures with clients, ostentatiously eats street noodles, and willingly takes autographs. Once he signed his autograph right on the back of a Chinese journalist.

Although, they had been seen together with Alice before, also in Taipei. In early June 2024, Alice was sitting with the heads of technology companies in one of the bars. As “NetThunder” founder and CEO Parker Schmitt (who was there that night) recalls, after midnight and after a few shots, she proposed a bet — as soon as she called Jensen, he would come right away.

So it happened. A few minutes later Huang entered the bar in his usual black leather jacket, drank a shot of whiskey with the company and sat next to Alice.

When exactly their romance began and how long it lasted is unknown.

A girl with an unknown biography

Alice Huang is a Chinese citizen. In Singapore corporate documents, she is listed as Huang Le (which is her Chinese name in Latin) and Alice Huang (a version for English-speaking partners). She speaks fluent English and has actively developed contacts with executives from major American companies in the field of artificial intelligence.

Only a little is known about her. A profile has been preserved in the Chinese database of investment managers, according to which Alice began as a reporter for “Hunan TV: and the Chinese state television channel CCTV, then she allegedly worked as an assistant to the president of the private banking division at HSBC (a British international bank and investment company).

Later, she became a director of the Shanghai fund “Hexi Capital”, associated with investors in data centers and technology companies. However, journalists were unable to confirm at least part of her biography. For example, “Hunan TV” said that they did not remember such a reporter, and there was no mention of her on the CCTV website.

One of the pictures that Alice posted on her "WeChat". After the publicity, the account became inaccessible.

Instagram / longliveai

The sign behind the couple reads "Friendship Bench" — thatʼs the name of a sculpture by American artist John F. Kennedy.

Instagram / longliveai

In March 2023, Alice became the director of the Singaporean company “Megaspeed”. At that time, it was owned by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands with a name that repeated Aliceʼs Chinese name — “Huang Le Limited”.

In November, the company was sold to another Singaporean firm, and Alice resigned from her position. However, she continued to call herself a representative of the company at events next to Huang.

A mistress with contracts worth billions

“Megaspeed” called itself one of the “Nvidia” main partners in the Asia-Pacific region. Its business was structured as follows: the company bought servers with Nvidia chips and installed them in data centers in Malaysia and Indonesia. Customers remotely rented their computing power, i.e., running and training artificial intelligence models on them. The largest such customer was China’s Alibaba.

On paper, “Megaspeed” looked modest. On “LinkedIn”, it indicated between two and ten employees, and the number on its website turned out to be not an office number, but a private one — the person who answered the call of AFP journalists said that he did not know such a company.

At the same time, the “Megaspeed” Malaysian sister-company purchased equipment with the most modern “Nvidia” chips from June 2024 to February 2026 for at least $4.8 billion. For a small and little-known company, this was an extraordinary amount. It was this purchase that interested the American authorities.

From customs documents, the Americans already knew that this company was purchasing huge batches of advanced “Nvidia” equipment, which cannot be freely sold to China. On site, American inspectors saw that the expensive equipment was still in boxes.

This aroused suspicion that it was only shown to inspectors in Malaysia, and could later be sent to the real customer in China. Later customs records showed that “Megaspeed” purchased servers with Nvidia H100, H200 processors and newer Blackwell chips — B200, GB200 and GB300.

However, US authorities did not find convincing evidence of their illegal export. Jensen Huang said that “Nvidia” checked the location of all the supplied processors and did not find any violations.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “Megaspeed” has been under scrutiny for more than a year by not only the Commerce Department but also the Justice Department. Recently, the US officials discussed whether to put it on the “Entity List” (a list of companies that can only sell American products with special permission). However, the decision was postponed.

Intelligence did not see the client

American intelligence agencies have been monitoring Alice since at least 2025.

At first, they were interested in her connections with “Megaspeed” and possible shipments of chips to China, but later they found out that she had direct and much closer access to Jensen Huang than it seemed.

Last fall — that is, about a year before the public scandal — intelligence reported this to Trump. At the time, the intelligence agencies believed that Huang himself did not know who Alice was working for.

Huang himself was not publicly accused of having ties to Chinese intelligence, but at the same time he was not warned about the surveillance of his mistress. Usually, a person of interest to foreign intelligence can be invited to a “protective briefing” — to explain the risk, to advise to limit contacts and to monitor what information she shares.

In Huang’s case, the American authorities did not do this — such a warning could have exposed the surveillance of Alice and disrupted the operation. Trump did not want a conflict with “Nvidia”, because its shares were one of the main drivers of the growth of the American stock market, and Huang was his advisor on artificial intelligence.

Later, some senior Trump administration officials questioned how Huang could have been so unaware of his mistress’s activities for so long. The New York Times describes them as “unnamed senior Trump administration officials” and does not specify their positions.

However, it is known that Marco Rubio supervised the preparation of the secret memo on Huang. This memo, which has been circulating among senior administration officials since the spring of 2026, no longer discussed Alice’s possible ties to the Chinese authorities.

American intelligence believed that she had been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s main civilian intelligence agency. According to people familiar with the memo, Alice was supposed to gather information about Huang, “Nvidia”, and also to find out whether it was possible to influence the company’s position on selling China the most powerful American chips.

Huang had direct access to Trump and persuaded him to relax restrictions. He insisted that the ban would only force China to create its own processors faster, saying that selling American processors would permanently “hook” China onto the US technological needle and keep it completely dependent on American developments.

Huang even offered Trump a direct commercial benefit for the US, so that the Chinese would pay duties of 15% to 25% on each officially sold American license. American officials also suggested that through the mistress, the Chinese could also learn the details of Huang’s conversations with Trump.

Even before the spy scandal, Huang had been criticized by lawmakers from both parties. In July 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks urged him not to meet with companies linked to the Chinese military and intelligence before his trip to Beijing.

The heads of the House China Select Committee — John Moolenaar and Raja Krishnamurthy — demanded that “Nvidia” explain to whom it sold chips in China and Southeast Asia and how it verified their ultimate recipient.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun called the latest espionage allegations groundless and said the US was trying to smear China. Alice herself did not respond to reporters. Her whereabouts are unknown.

From "completely normal contacts" to confession of betrayal

On October 29, The New York Times first reported that American intelligence believed Alice was a Chinese agent who had become close to Huang. “Nvidia” responded that its CEO meets with thousands of customers every year and that his contacts with Alice were not “unusual”.

After this publication, Huang himself told Bloomberg that his contacts with Alice were related to “Megaspeed” and were “completely normal”, and that “Nvidia” had checked all the chips purchased by the company.

However, on November 6, the Financial Times reported on the affair and a secret memo directly calling Alice a Chinese spy. After that, it became impossible to explain everything by ordinary communication with a client.

In a letter to employees that “Nvidia” later released, Huang admitted more than just the betrayal. He wrote that his family deserved honesty and loyalty, but instead he had failed them and “ruined the life they had built together”, and said he hoped the family could recover and that he would eventually regain their trust.

He also wrote that he had failed employees, the board of directors, partners, and shareholders, who had a right to expect better leadership from him. He promised to fully cooperate with an independent investigation, protect “Nvidia” and US national security, and regain the trust of his colleagues.

He also emphasized that he was proud to be an American citizen. Huang’s wife Lori and their son Spencer have not commented publicly on the scandal. His daughter Madison (who also works at “Nvidia”) canceled a planned trip to Seoul, where she was to speak at a conference and meet with South Korean officials.

The organizers explained this as "family circumstances", but did not specify whether it was specifically about the fatherʼs affair.

Huang will have to justify himself not only to his wife

On November 8, the “Nvidia” board of directors assigned a committee of independent directors and outside lawyers to investigate Huang. “Nvidia” did not say who exactly was on the committee or how long the investigation would last.

Huang was not suspended during the investigation — the board said it trusted his management and saw no reason to believe that company secrets or national security had been compromised.

The final decision on whether Huang would remain in office will be made by the board of directors. The stock market was the first to react: by the time trading opened on November 9, “Nvidia” shares had fallen by almost 5%, and the company risked losing about $250 billion in market value. However, analysts consider Huangʼs resignation unlikely.

Congress has its own questions for Huang. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, China Select Committee Chairman John Moolenaar, and Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford invited Huang to a joint closed-door briefing on November 18. This is a meeting without the press, and this format allows for the discussion of classified intelligence data and internal “Nvidia” protocols.

Huang must agree or propose another date by November 11. For now, this is just an invitation, not a mandatory briefing notice, so he can refuse, but then the committees can demand his participation in the meeting and company documents through a mandatory notice. Congress wants to find out what access Alice had to Huang and how “Nvidia” protects management from foreign intelligence services.

Trump has already said that Huang should remain as “Nvidia” CEO, but he clarified that he did not discuss the scandal with him, calling him a “decent man” who has done “an incredible job for our country”.

In Trump’s opinion, Huang probably has some explanation and should be listened to: “I haven’t heard that he did anything wrong. He had a connection with someone, but things happens.”