AI chip leader Nvidia launched an investigation into reports CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence campaign—just as the U.S. has intensified its own efforts at economic warfare.
Nvidia’s board released a statement Sunday that a committee of independent directors and an outside counsel will oversee the probe, adding that Huang supports the review and plans to cooperate.
“The Board prioritizes U.S. national and economic security, which is paramount to the interests of NVIDIA and its shareholders,” it said. “While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board’s inquiry will examine all available information.”
The announcement followed reports that Huang had a romantic relationship with Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, whom U.S. intelligence suspects was working as a spy for China.
According to the New York Times and Financial Times, the Nvidia boss admitted to the affair and apologized in an internal message to company employees.
“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,” he said in the message.
Representatives for Nvidia and Megaspeed didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
U.S. officials believe Alice Huang was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security, sources told the FT, and surveillance revealed that she was feeding information to China, according to the New York Times.
Jensen Huang, who isn’t related to Alice, is a central figure in the U.S. AI industry, leading a company that develops world-class chips powering large language models.
Its technology is so sensitive that the Trump administration has restricted exports of Nvidia’s most cutting-edge products to China while President Donald Trump has often cited the U.S.-China AI rivalry as a reason for not slowing down development.
Meanwhile, Megaspeed is a Singapore-based data center company that quickly became one of Nvidia’s top customers in Asia, purchasing more than $4.8 billion in chips over the past two years.
But the U.S. also investigated Megaspeed last year for allegedly helping smuggle restricted AI chips into China, which the company has denied.
News of the Nvidia’s probe into Huang comes weeks after reports indicated the U.S. defense and intelligence communities are getting more aggressive about industrial espionage.
Sources told the Washington Post that the Pentagon is planning a spying program that deploys “nonofficial cover officers” who pose as executives—a covert effort in a larger economic warfare campaign.
Politico also reported that the Defense Department is quietly building an elite agency to covertly sabotage foreign technology programs that could threaten U.S. military superiority.
The Technology Support Office was established in April by reorganizing two classified intelligence programs that have been secretly carrying out technology sabotage at a smaller scale since 2023.
The Pentagon has denied the reports.
“This query appears to be built on information that is simply not true. Whoever is feeding you these claims are either badly misinformed or deliberately leading you astray to peddle their fantasies,” it told both outlets.
But other signs point to the U.S. taking economic warfare more seriously. In September, CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said the U.S. is expanding espionage against China by targeting companies in sensitive areas like AI, biotechnology and chips.
Also this year, the Pentagon formed the Economic Defense Unit for “deterring, denying, disrupting, and helping to defeat adversaries through economic means,” sources told DefenseScoop.
AI in particular has emerged as such an important technology that the Defense Department has been more heavy-handed with U.S. companies as well.
Anthropic’s AI models were used in the military, but a dispute between the San Francisco-based startup and top brass led to a schism just as the Iran war started.
CEO Dario Amodei has said the company is patriotic and seeks to defend the U.S., but wouldn’t allow its AI to be used in mass domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons.
The Pentagon insisted it would use the AI in lawful scenarios and refused to abide by any limits from the company that would go beyond those constraints.
After failing to reach a compromise earlier this year, Trump ordered the Pentagon to phase out Anthropic’s technology. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also designated the company a supply-chain risk, meaning contractors can’t use it for military work.
Last month, an appeals court ruled the supply-chain risk designation is illegal, but the Pentagon confirmed it’s no longer using any Anthropic tools.