New Delhi: AI chipmaker Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang has found himself at the centre of a Chinese spy plot that alarmed the US. Taiwan-born Huang, who is leading the world’s most valuable company, was in a close relationship with a Chinese woman who was allegedly passing crucial information to Beijing, which is locked in an AI race with the US, reported The New York Times on Thursday.
The Chinese national, identified as Alice Huang or Huang Le, served as the managing director at Megaspeed, a data centre company in Singapore, and was under the scanner of American intelligence officials for diverting advanced Nvidia AI chips to China.
The woman later turned out to be a Chinese intelligence asset. However, what came as a bigger shock to the US was that she was also in touch with Jensen Huang — a close ally of President Donald Trump, the report revealed.
Trump, the report said, was apprised of the intelligence findings. However, he did not act, possibly to save Nvidia from crashing.
People privy to the investigation told NYT that Alice Huang continues to be under surveillance. However, the Nvidia CEO has not been officially informed that he was a target of Chinese intelligence.
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‘Groundless smears’
An Nvidia spokesman said that there was nothing “unusual or unexpected” about Jensen Huang’s meetings with Alice Huang and that it was “part of a CEO’s job”.
“Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year,” John Rizzo told NYT.
He added that the AI chipmaker was “confident that if the U.S. government believes that any person is a threat to American industry, it would let us know”.
Rizzo also clarified that Nvidia doesn’t share sensitive trade secrets or information that can comprise national security with its customers.
AI company Megaspeed, which is a cloud partner of Nvidia, first came under scrutiny in 2024 after the US Commerce Department went to its Malaysia data centre. The officials found packed Nvidia equipment at the facility, raising the suspicion that they were scheduled to be shipped elsewhere rather than being installed at the centre.
Neither the White House nor the CIA has responded to the findings yet. Megaspeed, however, told NYT that it is “committed to getting to the facts behind these allegations”, and will conduct a “thorough internal investigation”.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington refuted the spying claims, with spokesperson Liu Chang calling the findings “groundless smears and slanders” against China.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)