Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang, who has typically avoided the flashy controversies seen in leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman or SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk, has admitted to cheating on his wife of 40 years. This personal admission carries implications that extend beyond his private life, potentially impacting national security.
United States officials suspect that Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and executive at Megaspeed, is a Chinese spy feeding information back to Beijing. (It is clarified that Alice Huang is not related to Jensen Huang.)
Megaspeed, a Singapore-based AI infrastructure company, reportedly purchased $4.8 billion in Nvidia chips over the last two years. Both the U.S. and Singapore have previously investigated the firm for illegal chip sharing with China, with the Justice Department taking over the investigation, according to a Times report.
A significant development occurred on Wednesday. Citing five Nvidia employees, the Times reported that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with Kimberly Powell, the company’s vice president of healthcare who reports directly to him. Nvidia, Huang, and Powell have not confirmed the report. When contacted by a reporter, Huang reportedly said, “I don’t think you should be talking to me directly,” before hanging up.
Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia’s board is preparing to remove Huang, causing Nvidia shares to fall in after-hours trading.
The U.S. and China are locked in a fierce technological race to build advanced AI infrastructure, which influences economic futures, military prowess, and innovation. Nvidia is valuable in this competition as a major AI chip manufacturer, but as an American company, it faces government restrictions on selling powerful chips to Chinese entities.
As the controversy unfolds, we are organizing relevant events into a reverse-chronological timeline to keep you informed.
After reports of a second extramarital affair, Nvidia’s board reportedly plans to meet to discuss Huang’s future at the company, per the Wall Street Journal. Stock fell about 8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday and is down 11% in the past five days.
Huang is known for delegating little, with about 60 direct reports, and the company lacks an obvious successor or succession plan.
The New York Times reported that Jensen Huang also had an affair with Nvidia vice president of healthcare Kimberly Powell, who reports directly to the CEO.
The report claims Huang and Powell were captured on film being affectionate at a hotel during a conference earlier this year.
Huang has not responded to a request from three Republican congressmen to appear for a closed-door briefing regarding his affair with an alleged Chinese spy. House China Committee Chairman Moolenaar stated that if Huang doesn’t agree to the briefing, he will likely be subpoenaed.
The Nvidia CEO pulled out of upcoming speaking engagements at the ElevenLabs Summit and Anthropic CEO Forum.
Alice Huang and her family reportedly built a network of companies in China and Singapore to acquire Nvidia chips, including founding Shanghai Century Litong in 2023. This entity became an Nvidia-preferred cloud partner, providing priority access to chips, as reported by The Information. The Information also reported that Shanghai Century Litong facilitated buying $7.5 billion worth of Nvidia's chips, including banned ones.
Nvidia's head lawyer, Tim Teter, intervened in a 2025 U.S. government probe regarding suspected AI chip smuggling by Megaspeed International, contacting Commerce Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler about whether the Trump administration played a role in detaining Alice Huang.
In early 2025, Alice Huang and a business partner sought China-based investors for an Asian data center, promising they had no problem securing GPUs, according to the Financial Times.
On Sunday night, President Trump weighed in on Huang’s controversy and showed support for the Nvidia CEO.
“I have not spoken to him about it. I just know he’s a fine person, but you never know what’s going on,” Trump said.
When asked if Huang should remain chief of Nvidia, Trump replied, “I think so. Oh yeah, sure.”
Jensen Huang wrote in a letter to Nvidia employees — which was also published as a press release — that he cheated on his wife.
“I owe my family and all of you an apology,” Huang told his company. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”
Huang did not mention Alice Huang by name but linked his infidelity to “the national security concerns raised in news reports.”
“Nvidia’s Board of Directors has initiated an independent investigation. I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American,” Huang wrote.
Nvidia shares slid over 5% the following day.
Three Republican congressmen — Chairman John Moolenaar of the House Select Committee on China, Chairman Brian Mast of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Chairman Rick Crawford of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — sent a request to Huang for a closed-door joint briefing with their three committees.
“Recent reports raise significant national security concerns regarding the [People’s Republic of China]’s access to sensitive U.S. technology and information,” the chairmen wrote. “The issue of PRC infiltration and access to cutting-edge U.S. technology is core to the investigative work of our three committees this Congress. It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which U.S. national security has been placed at risk.”
U.S. officials had been investigating Alice Huang and Megaspeed for more than a year when the New York Times broke the story in late October that the two executives also had a close relationship.
An Nvidia spokesperson denied that this relationship was unusual.
“Jensen’s interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected. Meetings with customers are part of a CEO’s job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year,” Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo said. He added that “if the U.S. government believes that any person is a threat to American industry, it would let us know.”
U.S. officials circulated a secret memo among policymakers warning that Megaspeed’s Alice Huang, who had a relationship with Jensen Huang, was a spy for China’s Ministry of State Security. This memo was not public knowledge until it was later reported by the New York Times.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio supervised the drafting of the memo.
Around the same time, President Donald Trump was briefed on intelligence findings that possible Chinese spy Alice Huang had formed a close relationship with Jensen Huang. Trump did not act on this information.
The Nvidia CEO, a Trump ally, has repeatedly advocated for the U.S. government to let Nvidia expand its business in China.
Megaspeed was confirmed to be under investigation by both the U.S. and Singaporean governments in October 2025. As a customer of Nvidia, Megaspeed was suspected of helping Chinese companies get around American embargoes on chip exports.
Megaspeed, a neocloud that used Nvidia chips, had been renting computing power to Chinese internet giant Alibaba and other companies. A Commerce Department official who visited Megaspeed’s data center in Malaysia in 2024 found a hoard of Nvidia equipment still packed in boxes, raising concerns that it was being diverted to China rather than installed.
Jensen Huang had been spotted socializing with Megaspeed executive Alice Huang as early as 2024 in Taiwan, where the Nvidia CEO was born.
These investigations highlighted concerns about tracking chip exports. An Nvidia spokesperson stated that the company did not have “any reason to believe products had been diverted.”
“NVIDIA visited multiple Megaspeed sites yet again earlier this week and confirmed what we previously observed — Megaspeed is running a small commercial cloud, like many other companies throughout the world, as allowed by U.S. export control rules,” the Nvidia spokesperson said at the time.
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