Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Admits Affair With Businesswoman Accused of Spying for Beijing as Company Launches Probe

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has admitted to an affair with a Chinese businesswoman who is accused of spying, at a time when the United States and China are competing for dominance in artificial intelligence. Huang apologized in a message to his company. According to the New York Times, he said he had been unfaithful to his wife, adding, "My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry." There are also reports that the US president was warned about the Nvidia chief's entanglement.

Nvidia's board said in a statement that it has no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised. It also said it has launched a new investigation into the matter, after having previously found that everything was above board.

Tim Culpan said that, in his work as a journalist covering Huang for 26 years, Huang had never struck him as a womanizer, though everyone has weaknesses and this woman was clearly Huang's. He said there is considerable disappointment in Taiwan, where Huang was born in the south and is regarded as a hometown hero, even though he immigrated to the United States as a child.

According to Culpan, Taiwanese people are less upset about the affair itself than about the fact that Huang slept with a Chinese spy, which is considered deeply traitorous because China is a rival to Taiwan and has conducted military maneuvers around the island. Culpan described this as a significant fall from grace for a figure once seen as a golden boy. He also noted open questions about what intelligence may have leaked and what information flowed in both directions, and what damage could have followed for Taiwan, the United States and other national security interests.

The Chinese state responded to the report, saying: "The report in question is based on groundless speculation and it's nothing more than an attempt to smear China."

Culpan, who said he is not part of the intelligence community, said that the people he speaks to, the reporting and the documents he has seen do point toward her being a spy. He noted, however, that the definition of a spy is somewhat nebulous, since people can get caught up in espionage without being on the payroll of an intelligence agency.

Culpan said the information she was procuring, and her links to a company that started from nowhere and has clear ties to the Chinese government, all the way back to the Ministry of State Security, point in that direction.

Culpan said Nvidia will still make strong chips and sell them to customers around the world who want the best AI chips. He said the impact on the company will be long-term and will take time to fully understand. Huang had considerable lobbying power and was close to President Trump, and people listened to him on questions such as who should be sold chips, whether AI development should speed up or slow down, and what policies should cover national security, export and data centers.

Culpan said Huang's opinion will now carry much less weight, and that this will flow through to Nvidia's corporate interests over time rather than immediately. He said the fallout will take time to unravel, but he does not think this is the end of the story, and more reporting about Nvidia may raise the attention of US national security interests.

President Trump said he has not spoken to Huang about the matter. He said he just knows Huang is a fine person, but that you never know what is going on, adding that he hopes everything is fine and that Huang has done an incredible job.

Asked in hindsight whether he wished he had acted on the intelligence he was briefed on, Trump said he thinks so. He described Huang as an honorable guy who probably has an excuse for what happened, and said Huang has done an amazing job for the country.

The interviewer noted that the White House did not want Nvidia to sell certain chips to China in order to keep the US ahead in the AI race. At the same time, Huang was not invited on Trump's recent trip to China, yet he managed to get a seat on Trump's plane, which Trump picked him up for en route, the interviewer believed.

Culpan described the bromance between the two as transactional. It suits both of their interests to stay closely aligned and share ideas, thoughts, opinions and strategy. He said there is back and forth between them, but that one should not read too much into whether Huang gets on a plane or not. Culpan said there are clearly people around the president who are not happy with Huang's closeness and are trying to keep the two at a distance, which may come down to seating at a banquet or on Air Force One.

Overall, Culpan said, President Trump is definitely not throwing Huang under the bus right now, though he noted that who knows what will happen in the next few weeks.

The interviewer raised the businesswoman's position on the board of an important company said to be based in Singapore. Culpan replied that it is nominally Singapore, and that many Chinese companies are nominally based somewhere else. He pointed to Alibaba, which trades on the US stock market but is in name a Cayman Islands company, and said he would not put too much weight on where a company is registered.

Culpan said the board is going to conduct a review and investigation, and he would be very surprised if Huang gets booted out over this. He said the board has to tick a box and pretend it did all the right things, likely with an outside law firm. Looking ahead, he said that in the next few months, rather than the next week, people should watch for more instances where national security may have been at risk because of how Nvidia dealt with selling its chips and to whom.

Mattis said that, assuming the reporting is true that China's Ministry of State Security recruited a woman to get close to or influence Huang, the case is first and foremost a political one. He said the effort would aim to gather political intelligence about what is going on in Washington, with commercial intelligence about Nvidia's plans and customers as a secondary element.

Mattis said that when someone as prominent as Huang has become is accessible and their thoughts and opinions can be shaped, that person is the best example of someone one would want to influence, to use his influence on one's behalf. He said this has long been a key part of Chinese Communist Party intelligence work, which is not just collecting information or supporting decision makers, but actively shaping the world and influencing decision makers on the other side.

Mattis said China's spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, has ballooned in recent years and dwarfs the number of counterintelligence officers in the United States, with an estimated hundreds of thousands of agents. He described it as a big, sprawling organization with domestic and international responsibilities, a central ministry in Beijing, 34 provincial units, and probably hundreds of local county, municipal and state security bureaus.

Mattis noted that not all of these bureaus focus on the outside world or the United States or the tech industry. He said, however, that one can foresee hundreds if not thousands of officers thinking about how to collect technological intelligence and target US tech companies.

Mattis said the Chinese Communist Party understands it is in a global rivalry with the West, particularly the United States and democracies, and views technological supremacy as the key feature of who will win the 21st century. That rivalry defines the political and economic order and what follows socially and culturally.

Mattis said that for individuals like Huang he would be shocked if the Ministry of State Security were not trying to get close to, influence and leverage him against the United States or others. He added that dozens of companies across the AI industry, from software companies dealing with models through the whole tech stack, could be targeted for access to their leadership and, more importantly, for influence over what those companies decide and the countries where they operate.

Culpan said that someone is innocent until proven guilty, and that from Huang's admission, the known fact is that he had an affair. He called that a personal issue, not necessarily a national security one unless it becomes one. He said people should be given the benefit of the doubt and that Huang should be asked for a conversation behind closed doors, like the one three Republican congressional chairs in the House have requested.

Culpan argued that because of Nvidia's role and its impact on AI, the company is too important to be left alone or simply to pursue a narrow commercial interest, since it has national and international consequences. He said the most important thing is to understand what is taking place, and suggested Huang could write a letter to the people who work with him explaining the problems, the choices he made and his apology.

Mattis said that if Huang is cooperative and decides it is important to come clean in a free and frank discussion, a meaningful change in some of Nvidia's behavior could follow. He said Nvidia has reportedly looked the other way, and that the Chinese military and security sides have clearly been looking into how to acquire Nvidia chips and have acquired them. He said this would give a starting point for working out how best to apply export controls, deal with licensing and deal with chip smuggling, which is very clearly a national security issue.

Mattis said that in a political influence case the damage is unlike a spy case, where one can track which files were taken, which system was compromised, or which human asset or technical penetration was lost. Losing the integrity of a decision-making process is much harder to reduce to a bottom line.

Mattis said some Nvidia decisions may be clearly narrow commercial, profit-driven choices, while others may be political decisions Huang was involved in or pushed, though it is unclear. He concluded that understanding what took place requires a free and full conversation, because Nvidia is certainly going to face real liabilities and problems going forward from this incident.