Jensen Huang had extramarital affair with Chinese spy, Nvidia launches investigation

Nvidia said on Sunday it had launched an investigation into CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang. Previously, Huang admitted to the company's board of directors that he had had an intimate relationship with a corporate executive, and the U.S. intelligence agency determined that the woman was a Chinese spy.

The woman’s name is Huang Le (sound, her English name is Alice Huang).美国政府的监控发现，她一直直接向北京提供情报，此后，黄仁勋与她的关系引起了美国政府的关注。 The discovery raises troubling possibilities because Huang is not only one of the most influential figures in the artificial intelligence revolution but also a key ally of President Trump.

Huang apologized in a statement to the company: "I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry."

Nvidia's board said it had "no reason to believe that national security or Nvidia's trade secrets were compromised" but that "the board's investigation will review all available information." The board said Huang "fully supports this review and is committed to cooperating with it."董事会没有透露调查的更多细节，也没有说明调查将持续多长时间。

董事会表示，63岁的黄仁勋将在调查期间继续领导公司。 As a co-founder, he established a unique management structure at Nvidia, controlling all aspects of the company's business and directly managing approximately 60 employees who reported to him.

"Today's news will not slow down Nvidia," company spokesman John Rizzo said. "Jensen Huang will continue to carry out his duties as CEO and lead Nvidia without interruption."

The New York Times reported last month that U.S. intelligence agencies discovered that Huang had developed a close relationship with a Chinese citizen. The person was in the chip procurement business and U.S. officials determined she was gathering intelligence for Beijing.

This chip buyer is Huang Le. According to her biography, she worked as a television reporter in China before becoming an executive at a Singapore-based data center company. The company later became one of Nvidia's largest customers in Southeast Asia, buying more than $4.8 billion worth of chips since June 2024.

The company is called Megaspeed. Last year, the New York Times reported that the U.S. Commerce Department was investigating whether Megaspeed assisted China in smuggling artificial intelligence chips subject to export restrictions, but Nvidia has continued to do business with the company since then.

Nvidia and Huang initially insisted there were no problems or anything unusual about his relationship with Huang. In an interview with Bloomberg News last month, Huang said that his dealings with Huang Le were "all related to Megaspeed, which is completely normal and nothing special."

This relationship and extramarital affair were a rare misstep for Huang.

In the past three years, Huang Renxun has been smooth sailing. The chip company he led, which produces key technologies used to build artificial intelligence systems, grew into one of the world's most valuable companies and became a core force in the data center construction boom that drove the U.S. economy. Trump became an ally with him and invited him to fly on the "Air Force One" presidential plane. Whenever he attends an event, there will be a large number of people chasing him for autographs. The black leather jacket he wears every day has also become a sought-after item among collectors.

As the business boomed, Huang also brought his family into the company's core business areas. His son Spencer plays a leading role in the company's robotics business as director of product management. Daughter Madison, senior director of product marketing, is also involved in the robotics business and is responsible for the company's communications and marketing efforts. His son-in-law, Nico Capres, serves on the company's business development team.

Huang Renxun once said that the success of his business would not be possible without the support of his wife Luoli. The two married in 1985 and first met when Huang was a teenage engineering student at Oregon State University. At that time, there were only three girls in an engineering laboratory with 250 people, and Luo Li was one of them. Huang Renxun, who had skipped two grades in high school, managed to be assigned to the same experimental group as her and tried to impress her with his intelligence.

"I know I look like a kid, so her first impression of me is that I'm smart," Huang said in 2024 when talking about his career at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "I walked up to her and said, 'Do you want to see my homework?' And I promised her, 'If you do your homework with me every Sunday, I guarantee you'll get all A's.'"

Huang also promised her that he would become the CEO of a company by the time he was 30. In 1993, shortly after he turned 30, he co-founded Nvidia to fulfill this promise.

"Lori took care of everything, and I don't remember her complaining once. It was her gift to me," Huang said on the "How I Built This" podcast.

The U.S. government has been investigating whether Megaspeed may have transferred Nvidia's advanced artificial intelligence chips to China, and began monitoring Huang Le more than a year ago. During the surveillance, they discovered she was communicating with an American citizen identified as Jen-Hsun Huang.

Officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they were convinced there was a romantic relationship between the two. This undercuts the initial misleading statements Nvidia made to the New York Times and others over the past year about the nature of Huang’s relationship with Le Huang.

About a year ago, Trump was informed that the U.S. intelligence community had been conducting electronic surveillance on Huang Le.

This spring, Secretary of State Rubio oversaw the drafting of a highly classified memo detailing intelligence that Huang Le was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to target Jen-Hsun Huang. The memo was circulated shortly before the president's visit to China earlier this year.

With the revelation of US surveillance of Huang Le, Huang's room for maneuver has almost disappeared. Congress wants him to testify — likely under oath — and reports of the surveillance have added to the belief that U.S. intelligence services may have been aware of the nature of his relationship with Huang.