Jensen Huang Concealed a Relationship With a Chinese-Linked Executive, Then Resigned From Nvidia

In September 2025, a call from The New York Times landed at Nvidia with a question about a Singapore data center company called Megaspeed and its Chinese-born executive, Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le. The Times was reporting that Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, was close to her. People familiar with the discussion said he was agitated. Nvidia employees say he could have a volcanic temper, and while he did not deny knowing her, he bristled at the suggestion of closeness.

The company pushed back hard. Madison Huang, his daughter and his chief of staff, pressed the communications team to respond forcefully, and a crisis communications firm called Heller was brought in. The line was that the two had only a business relationship. Mr. Huang held to it for 13 months, even after The Times reported last month that the U.S. had gathered intelligence showing Ms. Huang was secretly working with China's top spy agency. Last weekend, facing new revelations, he told Nvidia's general counsel the truth: it had been an affair. Then, on Wednesday, a Times reporter called him about a second extramarital relationship, this one with an executive who reported to him. The board convened an emergency meeting. Less than 24 hours later, the 63-year-old resigned.

The fallout has reached Silicon Valley, Washington and Beijing. Administration officials are reconsidering A.I. export regulations, a move that could hurt some American businesses but tilt the race with China toward the U.S. It has also exposed a feud between several senior officials and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that Treasury had spent months pushing Commerce to crack down on the flow of American technology to China. The story rests on a year of reporting and conversations with more than 100 people, including current and former Nvidia executives and government officials, who spoke anonymously.

Last fall, Nvidia was close to becoming the first $5 trillion company. Mr. Huang joined President Trump at a state dinner at Windsor Castle hosted by King Charles III, and Mr. Trump told him at a gathering hosted by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, "You're taking over the world, Jensen." Meanwhile, advisers at the Santa Clara headquarters were wrestling with questions about Megaspeed, which had bought more than $2 billion of Nvidia technology in a year, making it one of the largest buyers of A.I. chips in Southeast Asia. Companies like it were legally buying American chips and building data centers that rented computing power to Chinese firms, but the U.S. government suspected some, Megaspeed included, of funneling chips to China. By last summer Singapore accounted for 22 percent of Nvidia's quarterly sales, about $10 billion, second only to the United States.

Mr. Huang had been seen with Ms. Huang publicly twice over two years. In Taipei she waited behind him in a pink dress as he handed out noodles, then rode away with him. A senior Nvidia official called a dinner they both attended a "business dinner." At a Taipei bar party, Parker Schmitt, chief executive of NetThunder, recalled her saying she could get Jensen to come. He appeared and drank a whiskey shot with the group. After the October 2025 article, Nvidia changed how it reported geographic sales, dropping Singapore by reporting by customers' headquarters rather than billing location.

American spy agencies, meanwhile, had been watching Ms. Huang. Roughly a year ago Mr. Trump was briefed that she was passing information to Chinese intelligence and had a close relationship with Mr. Huang. He did nothing with it. Officials never gave Mr. Huang a defensive briefing, for reasons that remain unknown. Nor did the information stop Mr. Huang's push to sell chips to China. In December he proposed to Mr. Trump a less powerful H200 chip, and the president asked for a 25 percent cut for the U.S. government. Mr. Huang agreed. By March, Chinese pre-purchase orders were arriving.

In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio prepared a classified memo on Ms. Huang's ties to the Ministry of State Security, circulated to a handful of Cabinet officials. Mr. Huang was left off the list of executives for Mr. Trump's May trip to Beijing. After news coverage of the omission, Mr. Trump invited him to join Air Force One at an Alaska refueling stop. Mr. Rubio briefed the president en route, but Mr. Trump was not moved and posted that it was an honor to have "the Great Jensen Huang" along. Beijing still did not clear H200 purchases, and some officials feared Mr. Huang would push for Blackwell sales to break the impasse.

At an August all-hands, Mr. Huang called Washington Nvidia's greatest risk. Midway through, his phone buzzed. Only two people in the world could call him, he said, and one was Mr. Trump. He stepped away to take the call. Now Nvidia, a pillar of the A.I. boom and the economy leaning on it, must proceed without him, while Washington decides what its export rules will look like.