Nvidia board weighs Jensen Huang's future after reports of affair with alleged Chinese spy

Board weighs the chief executive's future

Nvidia's board has met to discuss the future of Jensen Huang, the company's co-founder and chief executive, who may lose his post. According to the Wall Street Journal and CNN, board members are preparing to dismiss him. Nvidia was until recently the most valuable listed company in the world, and its graphics processors form the basis of AI infrastructure. The company also invests in OpenAI and other firms in the sector. The main obstacle is the absence of a succession plan. Huang, who has been closely identified with the company for decades, holds 3.6% of its shares, and reports describe the lack of a successor as the result of a deliberate policy on his part.

Affair allegations

The affair reports have widened. The New York Times reported that Huang also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, a vice president for healthcare who worked under him. The most serious allegation concerns Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, who heads Megaspeed, a company registered in Singapore. Media reports say she worked for China's Ministry of State Security and passed information about Nvidia to Chinese intelligence. They also say she encouraged Huang to lobby for loosening export restrictions on advanced AI chips to China. American intelligence has regarded her as a Chinese intelligence asset, a view Beijing denies.

Export controls and the White House

According to the reports, Huang's influence was part of the reason President Donald Trump decided to ease export restrictions on Nvidia chips to China. A network of companies run by Alice Huang and her family reportedly redirected large volumes of advanced Nvidia components around American restrictions. Huang was close to Trump and to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Axios reported that Lutnick repeatedly blocked sanctions against Megaspeed, which has long been suspected of evading sanctions, and the administration has taken no action against the company so far. Trump reportedly was informed at least twice about the link between Huang and the woman suspected of espionage, yet ignored it.

Who Alice Huang is

Her public CV says she spent four years as a television reporter before moving into finance, working at the private banking arm of HSBC and then at CITIC Securities, a state-backed Chinese investment bank. Other publications link her to Hunan TV and the state broadcaster CCTV. The oldest publicly available documents date to 2010 and show a sport and recreation company registered at the address of the Beihu No. 9 private golf club in Beijing, a club that attracted Chinese officials. She later invested in a Chinese medical equipment maker that listed in Hong Kong. Her long-standing business associate Kang Wei, 51, was presented as her husband, though no publicly accessible document confirms this. Kang gained a reputation as a stock market strategist in the first decade of the 2000s and later invested in online gaming companies. China's securities regulator imposed penalties on him at least twice.