Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admits affair with executive tied to China spy claims

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has admitted to an extra-marital affair with Alice Huang, an executive at cloud customer Megaspeed who has been alleged to be a Chinese spy by US intelligence authorities. Huang confessed to the relationship in a company-wide letter sent to employees on Sunday, November 8, stating he had been unfaithful to his wife and taking full responsibility for his actions.

Investigation and Security Concerns

Nvidia's board of directors has opened an independent investigation into whether the billionaire CEO was targeted in a foreign intelligence effort, with Huang stating he will cooperate fully. The developments follow a memo drafted by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warning top Trump administration officials about the close relationship, according to a report by The New York Times. Short seller Culper Research had previously flagged the relationship in May 2026, alleging that over 20 per cent of Nvidia's fiscal 2026 compute revenue was tied to China through illegal GPU diversion via Southeast Asian intermediaries like Megaspeed.

Market Impact

Nvidia shares fell sharply following the news, tumbling more than 6 per cent in Frankfurt trading to reach fresh multi-month lows amid broader investor worries over the AI market. Meanwhile, shares in key Asian chip suppliers rebounded, with TSMC jumping 6.5 per cent and Samsung and SK Hynix climbing 2.9 per cent and 4.7 per cent respectively.

Context

Short sellers bet against a company when they believe its stock price will drop, often publishing detailed reports on potential risks and corporate governance issues. Cloud customers like Megaspeed build and operate large-scale data centres that require massive numbers of advanced graphics processing units to train and run artificial intelligence models.