US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in 2025 oversaw the drafting of a classified memo warning senior officials in the Donald Trump administration that Nvidia chief Jensen Huang was in a close relationship with a Chinese woman suspected of working for Beijing's spy agency, according to a report by The New York Times.
The memo was based on classified intelligence gathered through electronic surveillance of Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and senior executive at Singapore-based company Megaspeed. US intelligence officials had concluded that she had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) to gather information on Jensen Huang, who is not related to her, the report stated.
The document warned that the relationship could be part of a Chinese intelligence operation targeting one of the most influential figures in the global artificial intelligence industry.
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Huang has consistently argued against tighter restrictions on the export of advanced AI chips to China, saying American companies should be allowed to compete in the Chinese market. The memo was circulated among senior administration officials with high-level security clearances ahead of Trump's visit to China in May, the report added.
Despite leading one of the world's most valuable companies, Huang was initially excluded from the list of business and technology executives invited to accompany the president. It remains unclear whether the intelligence concerns influenced that decision.
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Trump later asked Huang to join the delegation after seeing media reports about his absence. The Nvidia chief met Air Force One during a stopover in Alaska before travelling to China.
The New York Times had previously reported that Trump was briefed roughly a year ago about US intelligence surveillance of Alice Huang and her suspected links to Chinese intelligence. When officials requested that the identity of an American citizen involved in her communications be revealed, the name turned out to be Jensen Huang.
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Asked on Sunday whether he regretted that decision, Trump said he did not. He also backed Huang remaining as Nvidia's chief executive, describing him as an "honourable guy". The comments came after Huang acknowledged being intimate with Alice Huang and apologised to his wife and children.
"I was unfaithful to my wife," he said. "My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry."
Nvidia said it had opened an investigation but had no reason to believe national security or company secrets had been compromised.
Alice Huang's company, Megaspeed, began purchasing advanced Nvidia AI chips worth billions of dollars in 2024, around the time she and Jensen Huang were photographed together at a gathering in Taipei.
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Megaspeed purchased about $2 billion worth of Nvidia products. It builds data centres in Southeast Asia and rents computing capacity to Chinese technology giant Alibaba. US officials suspect the arrangement has helped restricted Nvidia chips reach China indirectly.
Alice Huang also had connections with senior executives across the AI chip industry, including leaders at Gigabyte, a major assembler of Nvidia supercomputers.
China's embassy in Washington dismissed the intelligence reports as unsubstantiated and a smear campaign against Beijing. Alice Huang has not responded.
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