Nvidia CEO’s Affair Admission Counters Past Statements on Ties Jensen Huang · Bloomberg · Bloomberg Ian King and Lynn Doan Mon, November 9, 2026 at 12:16 AM EST 7 min read NVDA -2.03% Trade NVIDIA on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
(Bloomberg) -- For more than a year, Nvidia Corp. minimized the ties that Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang had with Megaspeed, the once-obscure spinoff of a Chinese gaming enterprise, and a woman named Huang Le who helped set it up.
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Both Nvidia and Jensen Huang had characterized Megaspeed as a legitimate, albeit large, buyer of Nvidia's AI chips despite US government concerns that China could be using the Singapore-based firm to gain access to advanced semiconductors. And they'd described reports of Jensen's relationship with Huang Le, who also goes by Alice Huang, as professional in nature.
Just in the past two weeks, despite reports of a close relationship between the two, Jensen defended himself, calling their interactions "completely normal."
Those comments made Jensen Huang's admission that he'd cheated on his wife of more than four decades all the more shocking, contrasting with his and the company's past statements. On Sunday, Nvidia said its board was investigating whether he'd been "the target of a foreign intelligence effort," following reports that US officials suspected Alice Huang was hired by a Chinese spy agency. The revelations have left Jensen Huang's future as the face of the AI infrastructure boom and head of one of the world's most valuable companies hanging in the balance.
Jensen Huang's ties to Alice Huang date as far back as 2024. The New York Times reported in October 2025 that she was mingling with a group of tech executives at a bar in Taipei a year earlier when she bet she could get Jensen to join them. Shortly after Alice Huang reached out, the Times reported, Jensen Huang showed up and took a whiskey shot with the group.
In response to that report, Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo said at the time that the company's "field operations teams often host groups of customers and partners at conferences, and when Jensen is available, may ask him to visit to provide updates on the market."
Nvidia continued to defend its business with Megaspeed, a so-called neocloud that rents out access to computing power for AI workloads, when Bloomberg News reported last December that the US government had been investigating Megaspeed's ownership structure and whether the firm had diverted Nvidia chips to China. Such smuggling would represent a major breach of US curbs aimed at limiting China's AI and military prowess.
US investigators were particularly focused on Alice Huang and her role in the company, Bloomberg reported.
At the time, an Nvidia spokesperson said the company's own review had found no evidence of diversion on Megaspeed's part and showed the firm was fully owned and operated outside of China, with no China shareholders. Megaspeed is simply offering "a cloud service permitted under the export control rules," the spokesperson said.
Nvidia has said it asked officials in Washington whether it needed to cut off Megaspeed, which has denied wrongdoing, and was told no. "When the law is clear, American companies honor US laws as they are, not as America's critics wish they were," Nvidia's spokesperson said at the time of Bloomberg's report.
While Nvidia was fending off criticism of its business with Megaspeed, the company was also waging a parallel battle in Washington for looser US export controls on its coveted artificial intelligence chips. Since 2022, the US government had steadily tightened restrictions to keep China from buying advanced AI chips, depriving Nvidia of a crucial market for its top products.
With President Donald Trump's return to power in early 2025, Jensen Huang pushed the new administration to allow the company to resume some sales of AI chips to Chinese customers. Huang forged a close relationship with Trump, making regular public appearances with the president, including on foreign trips to the Middle East and the UK. Those efforts paid off with Trump deciding in late 2025 to allow sales of the company's earlier-generation H200 chips to China.
Then last month, the New York Times revealed that US officials had concluded Alice Huang was a Chinese intelligence asset who had targeted Jensen Huang and formed a close relationship with him. In an interview with Bloomberg News following the Oct. 29 Times report, Jensen Huang said his dealings with Alice Huang were typical of those with Chinese customers and executives. He added that she was no longer with Megaspeed.
"Our relationship, our interactions, have been related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual," Jensen Huang said at the time. The CEO also said he hadn't been informed by the US government of its suspicions about Alice Huang.
In the days before Jensen Huang's admission, pressure had been growing in Washington for the Nvidia chief to offer a fuller explanation of his interactions with Alice Huang. A trio of House Republicans said Thursday they had requested a closed-door briefing from him on Nov. 18, the day after the chipmaker is scheduled to release its latest quarterly results, echoing public demands from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren for answers.
On Friday, the New York Times reported that US intelligence officials had told the Trump administration that Alice Huang was working for China's Ministry of State Security, which recruited her to collect information on him. US officials learned of the accusations in an intelligence memo, the Times said, citing unnamed sources. The Financial Times reported later the same day that US officials believed the relationship between Jensen Huang and Alice Huang was romantic.
Nvidia said in a statement after the Nov. 6 New York Times article that its cloud partners "do not ask us to seek changes in US law or advocate for sales to China." The company added that "we trust that if we were the target of a genuine threat, the US government would have notified us."
In response to the Financial Times report about a possible romantic relationship, Nvidia referred to previous comments by Jensen Huang about having a typical business relationship with Alice Huang.
Then, on Sunday, the New York Times reported that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had overseen the drafting of the top-secret memo this spring warning other Trump administration officials that the Nvidia chief had formed a close relationship with Alice Huang.
The memo, according to the Times, was based on classified intelligence from electronic surveillance of Alice Huang, and Rubio's involvement signaled how senior US officials were concerned about the relationship even as the chip magnate remained a fixture in President Donald Trump's orbit.
Hours later, Jensen Huang circulated his message to Nvidia employees admitting that he'd had an affair, plunging the chipmaking giant into the worst crisis in its three-decade history.
"I was unfaithful to my wife," Huang, 63, said in the memo. "My actions hurt her and our children." To his colleagues at Nvidia, he said, "You deserve better from me."
For now, Nvidia's directors said they had no reason to believe that national security or "Nvidia secrets" were compromised. "The board has confidence in Jensen," it said in a statement announcing an independent investigation. Trump also defended Huang, saying he should stay on as CEO.
In his message, Huang said he would support the inquiry. "I love our country and our company, and I am committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America's national security," he said.
--With assistance from Mackenzie Hawkins and Tom Giles.
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