Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has spent the last two years cultivating an unparalleled relationship with President Donald Trump, gaining extraordinary access and influence over federal artificial intelligence policy as his company has pushed for looser restrictions on selling advanced chips to China.
Now, revelations about Huang's affair with a suspected Chinese spy are putting that carefully built alliance under scrutiny – along with the millions of dollars Huang and other Nvidia executives have spent expanding its political influence in Washington.
The chipmaker is nearly inseparable from its co-founder and CEO Huang, who has over Trump's second term gone from being nearly unknown to the president to being part of a small cadre of executives accompanying him on Air Force One.
Nvidia has committed at least $26 million to Trump's pet projects, including $25 million toward his White House ballroom and $1 million to his 2025 inaugural fund. The company initially sought to keep its ballroom contribution anonymous, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Its ballroom pledge was tied with Apple's for the largest disclosed corporate contribution, the Post reported.
Those ties are drawing renewed scrutiny from congressional Democrats including Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who pressed Huang in November 2025 about Nvidia's ballroom donation and White House contacts. Blumenthal re-upped his warning on Thursday, while expected incoming House oversight Chairman Robert Garcia, D-Calif., vowed to investigate corporate corruption when Democrats take control in January.
Trump continued to defend Huang on Sunday, calling him an "honorable guy" and saying he had heard nothing suggesting wrongdoing. The president was briefed about the suspected Chinese intelligence operation in October 2025 but chose not to act, according to The New York Times. Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw a classified memo detailing the concerns this spring, the Times reported.
The president's defense underscores how Huang has become one of Trump's most prominent allies in the technology industry, repeatedly praising the president, attending White House events and accompanying him on a trip to China in May. Trump is due to return to China next week with a summit with other world leaders.
Congressional scrutiny on Huang ramped up after the Times reported Oct. 29 that U.S. intelligence determined Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen who is an executive at Singapore-based cloud computing company Megaspeed, was funneling information to Beijing and had "developed a close relationship" with Jensen Huang. The two Huangs are unrelated.
House Republican committee leaders on Thursday asked Jensen Huang to sit for a closed-door briefing on his ties with Alice Huang, saying recent reports "raise significant national security concerns regarding the PRC's access to sensitive U.S. technology and information."
In a statement to his company on Sunday, Jensen Huang admitted to the affair and apologized. He also revealed that Nvidia's board of directors has "initiated an independent investigation," which he said he supports and will cooperate with.
"I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America's national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American," the CEO said.
Nvidia didn't immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told CBS News on Monday morning that "high-level" Trump administration officials would lead a classified briefing for lawmakers later in the day. An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting, told CNBC U.S. intelligence chiefs John Ratcliffe and Jay Clayton were previously scheduled to lead a classified briefing on threats related to Iran with top congressional leaders.
Later Monday morning, the Times reported that the Commerce Department was investigating Megaspeed until August 2025, when the probe was abruptly transferred to the Department of Justice following outreach from Nvidia's general counsel about the matter.
Thomas Wackman, spokesman for Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, told CNBC in a statement, "BIS conducts all enforcement strictly by the book. BIS enforces aggressively across the board, including with respect to chip smuggling, and enforcement is at an all-time high."
The DOJ did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.
"NVIDIA's CEO just confirmed a relationship with a suspected Chinese spy," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee who is expected to chair the panel next year, posted on X Monday morning. "Congress is back today. We have legislation ready to go to stop advanced AI chips from fueling China's military."
Huang's access to Trump has coincided with a series of policy reversals that eased restrictions on Nvidia's chip sales to China, a lucrative market the company has fought to preserve.
In April 2025, Huang attended a $1 million-per-person dinner at Mar-a-Lago, after which the administration briefly held off on restricting Nvidia's H20 chips before imposing the limits days later. Following another meeting with Trump in July, the administration reversed course and began approving sales to China.
In December 2025, days after another meeting with Huang, Trump announced plans to permit exports of Nvidia's more powerful H200 chips to approved Chinese customers. The Commerce Department formally relaxed its licensing restrictions the following month.
Huang kept up the pressure in 2026, accompanying Trump on a trip to China as Nvidia fought congressional efforts to tighten export controls.
But Nvidia's success in Washington has yet to translate into unfettered access to China. Beijing has withheld approval for large-scale H200 imports, leaving hundreds of thousands of chips awaiting shipment as of early November.
Nvidia has also quietly ramped up its Washington influence operation, spending a record $2.15 million on federal lobbying in the third quarter – up 72% from the previous quarter and 10% from a year earlier, according to company disclosures. Its $4.69 million in 2026 lobbying expenses through September nearly matches the $4.97 million it spent in all of 2025.
The company's in-house lobbyists include alumni of congressional offices from key Republicans and Democrats, including Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who previously chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In June, Nvidia hired former Obama Commerce Department official and Intel lobbying chief Bruce Andrews to lead its Washington operation, then launched its first employee-funded PAC in August. The PAC raised more than $263,000 through September but had yet to back any candidates, according to a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Its next disclosure is due Dec. 3. Separately, two Nvidia executives – Gavin Sherry, vice president of software, and Sundeep Madra, vice president of hardware – each contributed $443,000 to the Republican National Committee on June 24.
The donations help illustrate the depth of Huang and Trump's relationship as the $4.3 trillion tech behemoth Nvidia buoys the U.S. economy and lends crucial advantage over China in the race for AI dominance.
They also raise further questions about the Trump administration's response to U.S. intelligence reportedly revealing that the loyal and powerful Nvidia CEO had a close relationship with a Chinese spy.
"Obviously Nvidia needs to take significant steps in its operations, security, and policy advocacy to ensure it takes national security concerns more seriously," Chris McGuire, a senior fellow for China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an X post Monday. "But it is even more important that the Department of Commerce tighten up export controls to prevent things like this from ever happening again."
"It is utterly baffling that despite being privy to this information for months, they have not taken even the most basic actions to protect the country, such as cutting off a company that is literally run by Chinese spies from buying AI chips," McGuire wrote.
