An admission and an investigation
Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang admitted in a letter to employees, also published as a press release, that he had betrayed his wife after forty years of marriage. In the letter, Huang does not name Alice Huang, who according to the source's account is not related to him, but links the betrayal to “national security concerns raised by news reports.” The CEO wrote that the board of directors has launched an independent investigation, which he intends to support and with which he says he wants to cooperate, and described his own conduct as unjustifiable. According to the source, Nvidia shares fell by more than 5% the following day.
The case stems from U.S. investigations into Alice Huang and Singapore-based company Megaspeed, conducted for more than a year before The New York Times revealed the relationship. A confidential memo, circulated among policymakers and drafted under the supervision of Secretary of State Marco Rubio according to reports, identified Alice Huang as a spy serving China's Ministry of State Security. Trump, the source adds, had been informed of the intelligence findings but reportedly did not act.
Chips, controls, and new allegations
On the industrial side, Megaspeed reportedly purchased $4.8 billion worth of Nvidia chips over the past two years; the company and Alice Huang had already come under scrutiny by Washington and Singapore over suspicion of illegally sharing chips with China. The source adds that the Department of Justice has taken over the federal investigation into the company, that in 2024 a Commerce Department official had found still-packaged Nvidia equipment in a data center in Malaysia, and that Nvidia's chief legal officer, Tim Teter, had intervened in a 2025 inquiry into alleged chip smuggling. The episode fits into the technology race between the United States and China, in which Nvidia is central as a producer of AI chips but is subject to export restrictions on its most powerful products to Chinese entities.
On Wednesday the story expanded: The Times, citing five people who work at Nvidia, reported a second extramarital relationship between Huang and Kimberly Powell, vice president of the healthcare division and his direct subordinate. Nvidia, Huang, and Powell did not confirm. Also on Wednesday, according to The Wall Street Journal, the board was preparing to remove Huang: the source reports an 8% decline in after-hours trading and an 11% decline over five days. Three Republican lawmakers asked Huang for a closed-door briefing with their committees on national security risks linked to China's access to American technologies; the chairman of the China committee, Moolenaar, told Fox Business that if he refused, a subpoena could be issued. Huang withdrew from planned appearances at the ElevenLabs Summit and the Anthropic CEO Forum.
What remains to be verified
The source makes clear that the picture is not complete. Nvidia has denied that interactions between Huang and Alice Huang were anomalous, describing talks with clients as part of the CEO's job. There is no confirmation of the second relationship or of a board decision. The account does not indicate the outcome of the internal investigation or any criminal consequences. The personal and corporate levels must be distinguished: Nvidia's management is described as heavily centralized around Huang, with about sixty direct reports and no obvious successor or succession plan—an element the source links to the significance of the case for the company and the industry.
