From The New Yorker · John Cassidy · · 3m
Jensen Huang's affair with alleged Chinese spy roils Nvidia
The Nvidia CEO's relationship with a woman U.S. officials believe is a Chinese intelligence asset has cost him seventeen billion dollars and raised questions about national security and his indispensability to AI.
In brief
The Nvidia CEO's relationship with a woman U.S. officials believe is a Chinese intelligence asset has cost him seventeen billion dollars and raised questions about national security and his indispensability to AI. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's affair with an alleged Chinese spy cost his stake seventeen billion dollars in…
Nvidia CEO's affair exposed
Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, confessed over the weekend to being unfaithful with Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed International, after the Times reported their relationship.
Woman believed to be Chinese spy
U.S. officials believe Alice Huang is a Chinese intelligence asset. The Chinese government has denied this and called the story a smear.
Stock plunge costs Huang billions
By Tuesday afternoon, Nvidia's stock had tumbled by more than ten percent, and Huang's stake in the chip company had lost more than seventeen billion dollars of its value.
Huang's outsized role at Nvidia
In Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, many people associate Nvidia and its success almost entirely with Huang, who founded the company in 1993 and has not made succession plans.
“In many ways, Jensen is Nvidia's Steve Jobs.”
Megaspeed's suspicious timing
Alice Huang moved to Megaspeed in 2023, not long after Biden restricted high-end Nvidia chip sales to China. The following year, Megaspeed started purchasing these chips in large numbers.
Chips possibly diverted to China
Some Megaspeed-purchased chips were installed in data centers in Malaysia and Indonesia, but U.S. officials grew concerned that others may have been diverted to China.
Huang's close ties to Trump
Huang has emerged as a close adviser to Donald Trump on AI policy. In October, Nvidia donated twenty-five million dollars to the President's East Wing renovation project.
Trump relaxed export restrictions
Weeks after Nvidia's donation, Trump announced a significant relaxation of Biden's export restrictions, allowing Nvidia to sell its powerful H200 chips to China.
Classified memo warned of spy
A highly classified memo produced under Secretary of State Marco Rubio's oversight warned top U.S. officials that Huang was in a close relationship with a Chinese spy before his May Beijing trip.
Trump defends Huang despite warning
Trump said he did not regret ignoring the intelligence, called Huang an honorable guy, and said the FBI was investigating but Huang would be in good shape.
“I really believe him.”
Competitors gain ground on Nvidia
As Nvidia's shares fell on Monday, rival chipmakers AMD and Intel saw their stocks jump. AMD's data center revenues rose by nearly one hundred percent in the latest quarter.
Nvidia's dominance may be slipping
Nvidia has provided three hundred billion dollars in financial support to customers buying its chips. An acute crisis at Nvidia could propagate across the AI sector with hard-to-predict consequences.
The essence
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's affair with an alleged Chinese spy cost his stake seventeen billion dollars in value, but the scandal raises deeper questions about national security, export controls and his role in U.S. AI policy.
