President Trump called Jen-Hsun Huang on Tuesday before Nvidia's chief executive resigned amid a fast-growing spy scandal, urging him to keep fighting to keep his job, according to two people briefed on the call.
The call was the latest example of Trump defending and offering asylum to Huang. Huang has become a high-profile ally and an influential adviser in the field of artificial intelligence. Even after U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Huang had an extramarital affair with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy, the president stood by him to the end.
Nvidia announced on Thursday that Jensen Huang, the man who built the company into the world's leading supplier of advanced artificial intelligence chips, was no longer CEO after it was revealed that he had an extramarital affair not only with the woman suspected of being a spy, but also with a subordinate.
A representative for Jen-Hsun Huang did not comment for this article. Neither Trump nor the White House responded to requests for comment about his call to Huang.
The New York Times previously reported that the president was warned at least twice about Huang's relationship with a Chinese citizen known as Alice Huang, who intelligence agencies determined had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security. The first warning came late last year and the second in the spring.
Trump took no action both times and took Huang with him when he visited China in May. He has publicly praised and expressed sympathy for Huang in recent days, calling him a "legend" in a social media post on Thursday.
Advisers to the president said that when told about the intelligence community's assessment of Huang, Trump downplayed the national security implications. An aide said Trump viewed the incident primarily through the lens of an extramarital affair and dismissed claims that Huang's entanglement posed a threat to the country.
Trump essentially believes Nvidia is "too big to fail," aides said. As one of the world's most valuable companies, Nvidia plays a vital role in the global economy and underpins the president's hopes of crushing China in artificial intelligence.
Trump's advisers, who described sensitive conversations on condition of anonymity, offered several explanations for his handling of the matter.
Chief among them is that the president has devoted a lot of energy to Huang as a modern-day Henry Ford, ushering in a technology that may define this century.
Trump believes that Nvidia's fate is closely linked to the U.S. economy and stock market. When reports emerged that the company's board was considering ousting Jensen Huang, Trump asked close associates how they thought the market would react. He worries that removing Huang could trigger a sharp decline in the market.
It was the president's last-ditch effort to save Huang, a striking moment in a relationship that was virtually non-existent just two years ago.
During Trump’s first term, Huang was completely off his radar. The Nvidia founder has virtually no presence in Washington. He does not lobby or donate to campaigns and has little interest in politics. Sweeping restrictions on chip exports imposed by the Biden administration have forced Huang to focus more on Washington, but he remains far less politically operating than his rivals. Unlike other tech leaders, he did not attend Trump's second inauguration.
Trump once told people around him enthusiastically about the first time he heard Jen-Hsun Huang’s name. "Who is he? What's his name?" he recalled. "He's the Jensen Huang of Nvidia. I said, 'What the hell is Nvidia?'"
By the end of 2024, Trump learned that Huang was an indispensable figure in the company that controlled at least 80% of the market for state-of-the-art artificial intelligence model training chips. And Huang Renxun also saw an opportunity to get closer to the president who craves personal attention and compliments.
In April 2025, Huang Renxun and his wife Lori attended Trump’s dinner with a group of donors in the technology and cryptocurrency fields at Mar-a-Lago. People who spoke to the president at the time said Trump took a keen interest in Huang after the dinner and that the more he learned about him, the more impressed he became. He was told again and again that the AI craze was running almost entirely on Nvidia. "You're taking over the world, Jason," Trump later told him.
Huang offers what Trump failed to achieve in his first term and hopes to achieve in his second term. During his first term, Trump promised to bring back jobs in the coal and steel industries. But these industries never regained their former strength.
In his second term, artificial intelligence offers an alternative path to the reindustrialization of America that Trump promised voters. People close to Trump say he has grown convinced that the data center construction boom and its massive demand for electricity can spark a manufacturing revival and keep an otherwise shaky economy strong. In the president's view, that makes the leader of an AI company the most valuable executive in the country, and Huang may be the most valuable of them all.
Huang Renxun took advantage of the opportunity to play this savior role. In 2025, he said Nvidia will produce up to $500 billion worth of artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. He also heaped praise on the president.
“The unique advantage that the United States has that no other country has is President Trump,” he said in July of that year. In May 2025, he traveled with Trump to the Persian Gulf, during which the president announced an agreement for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to purchase Nvidia chips. He provides the kind of deal-making hot news that Trump craves.
Jensen Huang convinced Trump that Nvidia should sell its chips as widely as possible so that the world is built on American, not Chinese, technology. David Sachs, White House director of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency affairs, supports his stance. The two men worked together to persuade Trump to take a side unpopular with the populist right on a major issue.
Right-wing China hawks in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) group, including Stephen K. Bannon, want a complete ban on chip sales to China. But Trump sided with Huang and fellow billionaires who lead other tech companies such as OpenAI, Meta and SpaceX.
