U.S. lawmakers ask Jen-Hsun Huang and Commerce Secretary Lutnick to be questioned

(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) U.S. Republican Senator Tim Scott wrote on social platform Scott chairs the Senate Banking Committee.

John Kennedy, also a Republican, talked about the questions Huang and Lutnick may face in an interview with CNN: "Why are they selling these chips? Have they traced the source of the chips? How do they know that these chips ended up going to the company and not the Chinese Communist Party?"

The Foreign Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on China and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the U.S. House of Representatives also requested that Huang, 63, accept a closed-door interview with a verbatim record on December 1, and stated that if he refused, a subpoena would be issued.

Democratic lawmakers demand explanation from Trump administration

Key U.S. lawmakers, including Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, asked the Trump administration on Thursday to explain how much it knows about the connection between Jen-Hsun Huang and an alleged Chinese spy.

U.S. news website Axios reported on November 11, quoting people familiar with the matter, that on November 5, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asked Lutnick face-to-face at a high-level meeting in the White House Situation Room about why Megaspeed, which is suspected of transporting U.S. chips to China, was not included in the "entity blacklist" that poses a national security risk and why the Commerce Department has been obstructing the implementation of export control measures.

Jen-Hsun Huang was previously reported to have had an extramarital affair with an alleged Chinese spy named Alice Huang. Huang Le was a senior executive of Megaspeed, a partner of Nvidia and registered in Singapore. According to media reports such as the New York Times, Megaspeed has purchased approximately $4 billion worth of Nvidia chips in recent years. The Chinese government has denied that Huang Le was a spy and dismissed the relevant reports as "purely groundless speculation" and "slander and slander."

Surveys in Singapore and Malaysia

Singapore said on Thursday it had barred Chinese citizen Huang Le from re-entering the country in February after she gave investigators inaccurate information about her role at Megaspeed, although she was not being investigated for espionage. Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs stated that during the investigation of Megaspeed, it had repeatedly sought information about a certain American server supplier from the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, but "the information or assistance obtained was very limited."

Malaysia said on Thursday it was investigating a unit of Megaspeed International over possible diversion of its advanced artificial intelligence chips to other countries.

Trump: He's going through hell

Asked on Thursday whether Huang should step down, Trump said it would depend on the situation. "If the woman was a spy, yes. If the woman wasn't a spy, maybe it would be different," he said. Trump said he believed Huang would "eventually stand up," adding: "I spoke to him yesterday and he's going through hell. The worst he feels is the damage done to his wife and his family. That's what he told me himself."

Who will be the successor?

After Jen-Hsun Huang resigned, Trump publicly named Tim Cook, who had just stepped down as Apple CEO, on social media, calling him the "only candidate" to succeed Jen-Hsun Huang in charge of Nvidia, and describing it as a "legend succeeding a legend."

After Jensen Huang resigned, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress took over as interim CEO. NVIDIA's board of directors will search for a formal successor among internal and external candidates. Analysts believe other chip industry executives are also potential candidates. These include Lisa Su, CEO of Intel rival AMD, and Rene Haas, CEO of chip design giant Arm. Arm's technology is used in nearly all smartphones and tablets. Apple executive Johny Srouji is also under consideration, according to media reports. He once led Apple to independently develop chips. However, it is unclear whether any of these candidates are interested. Nvidia has never changed its CEO in more than 30 years, and its management structure is completely tailored for Huang Renxun: there is no clear "number two person", and about 60 executives report directly to Huang Renxun.

Nvidia stock price fluctuates

Nvidia was founded 33 years ago and initially focused on computer graphics cards. Today, NVIDIA has also grown into a core infrastructure provider driving the global artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. Its technology can significantly improve the training efficiency of artificial intelligence software. Large AI developers like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have all built data centers using Nvidia technology. The explosion of generative AI such as ChatGPT almost entirely relies on NVIDIA's high-performance computing clusters for training and inference. NVIDIA is a super heavyweight stock in the three major U.S. stock indexes. It is also a benchmark for US stock investor sentiment and the valuation of the technology sector. After Huang Renxun resigned, Nvidia's stock price fell 14% that day, and then the decline narrowed to 4.34%. For more than a month, Nvidia's stock price fell from the closing price of US$239.24 on October 6 to the closing price of US$166.19 on November 12, and its market value has evaporated by approximately US$1.8 trillion.

China's position

On November 13, a reporter from Bloomberg asked at the regular press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, "Our reporter reported that Nvidia AI chips that were banned from export ended up in a data center in Shanghai, which was reportedly related to Alice. Huang (Huang Le) is related. My second question is that the US Congress and the Department of Commerce are accelerating the new chip bill to prevent Chinese companies from remotely using US computing power. In view of the upcoming APEC meeting, does China think these restrictions violate the Sino-US trade truce? "

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning responded: "For your first question, I am not aware of the relevant situation. As for your second question, China has always opposed the abuse of export control measures to disrupt the stability of the global production and supply chain. This is not in the interest of either party. China and the United States should jointly implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state and maintain the stable development of Sino-US economic and trade relations."