Why is Nvidia’s Jensen Huang at the centre of a US-China spy scandal?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is facing questions over allegations that a Chinese businesswoman with whom he had a romantic relationship was gathering intelligence for Beijing.

Huang – who cofounded Nvidia, the world’s second-most valuable company after Apple, more than three decades ago – admitted on Sunday to being unfaithful to his wife, but the company said it has no reason to believe United States national security or confidential information has been compromised.

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Nevertheless, Nvidia’s board announced an independent investigation into whether the 63-year-old Taiwan-US dual national had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation after media reports linking him to Alice Huang, a former executive at a Singapore-based data centre company.

“The Board prioritizes US national and economic security, which is paramount to the interests of NVIDIA and its shareholders,” it said in a statement, adding that Jensen Huang fully backs the review.

After the revelations, Nvidia – whose market capitalisation of $4.5 trillion is higher than the gross domestic product (GDP) of Japan, the world’s fourth-largest economy – saw its stock price tumble by more than 4 percent in trading overnight into Monday.

The controversy erupted as Washington seeks to prevent China from obtaining advanced American semiconductors, including Nvidia’s most powerful artificial intelligence chips, as the US and China fiercely compete for AI supremacy.

So what do we know about the affair, and how will this impact US-China relations and the race for AI dominance?

What do we know about the affair?

The two were reportedly seen together at industry events, including a dinner hosted by Jensen Huang in Taipei during the Computex technology exhibition in 2025.