How Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's extramarital affair could cause collateral damage in Washington

Extramarital affairs are usually private matters. Jensen Huang's has global implications.The 63-year-old is the leading face of the artificial intelligence revolution with his black leather jacket and fluff of grey hair. He runs the company Nvidia, which produces highly coveted computer chips. That's landed him on a late-night phone call with President Donald Trump, a promoter of the industry.Also Read: How China gets the Nvidia chips it needs to develop AIBut Mr. Huang was also liaising with a Chinese businesswoman who has allegedly fed intelligence — as well as advanced chips — to China. The woman, Alice Huang, is a former executive at the Singapore-based cloud computing company Megaspeed.It's a saga of personal betrayal, corporate espionage and high-tech development, and the fallout is spreading across Washington. There are bipartisan calls for investigations on Capitol Hill. The U.S. Department of Justice has opened its own probe. Nvidia, one of the most valuable companies in the world, is conducting an internal review.Some expect the technology to reshape human civilisation by imbuing computers with the vast powers of creation and analysis, and Mr. Trump has repeated that “whoever wins AI, wins." Nvidia is the backbone of America's plans for dominating the field.When asked about Mr. Huang's affair, Mr. Trump said this week that he had spoken to the tech executive as the scandal grew.“I think he'll be in good shape," President Trump said, adding that "he said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.”As for when the President first learned about the concerns involving Ms. Alice Huang, Mr. Trump brushed off the question.“They could have been mentioned," he said. "Certainly it didn't make much of an impact on me.”Authorities are investigating Megaspeed and Alice HuangWith the AI race between the U.S. and China often framed as a fierce and consequential rivalry, the Justice Department has persistently warned of the espionage threat posed by Beijing.That includes efforts to cultivate well-placed relationships in government and private industry, as well as to acquire sensitive technology, such as U.S.-developed AI chips.Last year, Megaspeed faced scrutiny from the U.S. Commerce Department over allegations that it skirted U.S. export laws and routed a large number of advanced Nvidia chips to Chinese users. The company denied those allegations. U.S. intelligence officials eventually concluded that Ms. Alice Huang had spied for China, according to The New York Times.The Commerce Department's probe was handed off to the Justice Department, and its National Security Division is investigating whether Megaspeed violated export control laws in an inquiry that will also include scrutiny of Ms. Alice Huang, according to a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing law enforcement probe.Megaspeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday (November 10), and The Associated Press was unable to reach Ms. Alice Huang.Jensen Huang has apologised to his company for the affair, saying he hurt his wife and their children, but he didn't address reports that Alice Huang was a suspected spy. Nvidia's board said that it had “no reason to believe” that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, and that Huang would remain in charge while cooperating with the investigation.Beijing has said the “Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated" and called it “nothing but smears.”Mr. Trump has been close with Jensen HuangAfter their first dinner together at Mar-a-Lago in early 2025, Mr. Trump latched onto Mr. Huang as a tech titan positioned to deliver on the President's own promises of an economic renaissance.The computer chips produced by Nvidia would essentially turn data centres into factories that made raw intelligence, which could then be applied across the economy to produce cars, new pharmaceutical drugs, advanced weapons and seemingly unparalleled wealth.Mr. Trump would regularly phone Mr. Huang to discuss this future.“From the moment that I met him, the only thing that he's ever talked to me about is creating more jobs, re-industrialising the United States, and protecting national security,” Mr. Huang told AP in an interview this summer. "He knows that if America is wealthy, we have a lot of tax revenues. We can fund the military, we can fund our economy, we can fund our communities, create more jobs.”Mr. Trump saw his political fortunes — and that of the country — in Mr. Huang's Nvidia. Mr. Huang joined Mr. Trump on Air Force One for a state visit to Beijing earlier this year. Just last month, Mr. Trump awarded Mr. Huang a National Medal of Science.The President called him “a man whose determination laid the foundations for the explosion of super intelligence and put America at the front of the race, an amazing man, gotten to know him so well.”Nvidia also donated $25 million to help fund the construction of Mr. Trump's White House ballroom.Multiple estimates suggest that more than half of the stock market gains during President Trump's second term came from the growth of the AI industry and the construction of data centres.Without that growth, consumer spending could slump, delivering another economic setback to a President who has already failed to deliver on his campaign promise of stopping inflation. Rising prices were among the reasons that voters delivered a harsh rebuke to Republicans in last week's midterm elections, returning control of Congress to the Democrats.Nvidia CEO pushed to sell some chips to China, faces congressional scrutinyWhile Mr. Huang said his interests were in helping America succeed, he also expressed a strong view that Nvidia should be able to sell some of its less advanced chips, such as the H200, to China. Nvidia has long argued that the sales would help ensure that the broader AI ecosystem was tied to America, boxing out Chinese chipmakers that are developing semiconductors and systems to compete with his company.Also Read: After Amazon, Google targets Nvidia’s software lock-in with TorchTPUThose arguments previously came under scrutiny, including from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who wanted him to appear before the Senate Banking Committee to answer questions about his desire to loosen export restrictions.Mr. Huang has so far refused to appear, and Democrats responded angrily when his extramarital affair came to light, raising concerns that a bulwark of American technology may have been compromised by the Chinese government.Ms. Warren said in a statement on Monday (November 9) that Nvidia had reportedly gotten approvals to export “hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips to China, including to companies tied to China's military.”And Mr. Huang's relationship with Ms. Alice Huang, Mr. Warren continued, “raises important questions NVIDIA must answer about the extent to which these activities were related."