WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the drafting of a classified intelligence memo warning senior Trump administration officials that Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang was entangled with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative.
Federal electronic surveillance intercepted communications between Huang and Alice Huang, a Chinese national and senior executive at Singapore-based infrastructure firm Megaspeed. United States intelligence agencies concluded that China’s Ministry of State Security had recruited her to extract strategic insights from the world's most influential artificial intelligence chipmaker. The two executives share a surname but are unrelated.
She targeted the summit of American tech.
The intelligence dossier landed on high-level desks in Washington ahead of President Donald Trump’s diplomatic mission to Beijing in May. Officials initially struck Huang’s name from the delegation of technology titans invited to accompany the president. Yet Trump reversed the snub after seeing public fallout over the chief executive's exclusion. Huang intercepted Air Force One during a refuelling stop in Alaska, boarding the presidential aircraft to join the delegation.
Asked whether he regretted bringing the semiconductor mogul along, Trump pushed back. He called Huang an "honourable guy" and backed him to stay at the helm of Nvidia. Huang publicly admitted to the liaison, apologizing to his family after the relationship surfaced.
"I was unfaithful to my wife," Huang said. "My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry."
Nvidia confirmed it opened an internal investigation into the matter, asserting that corporate monitors found no evidence that proprietary blueprints or national security assets leaked. Huang has long opposed strict White House chip embargoes, lobbying Washington to let Silicon Valley compete directly inside mainland China.
But national security officials remain fixated on the commercial trail. In 2024, around the time Alice Huang appeared alongside Jensen Huang at an industry dinner in Taipei, Megaspeed began buying advanced Nvidia artificial intelligence processors in massive volume.
Megaspeed amassed roughly $2 billion worth of high-end Nvidia hardware. The Singapore firm builds sprawling computing hubs across Southeast Asia and rents processing capacity directly to Chinese tech giant Alibaba. Federal investigators suspect the pipeline operated as a conduit to bypass export bans and funnel restricted silicon to Chinese entities.
Alice Huang also cultivated deep ties with other key supply chain figures, including executives at Gigabyte, which builds high-density supercomputing enclosures for Nvidia hardware. She has not commented publicly on the findings.
China’s embassy in Washington slammed the intelligence warnings, dismissing the accusations as an unsubstantiated smear campaign. Federal export regulators and intelligence agencies are now reviewing Megaspeed's Southeast Asian supply chains to determine whether further sanctions or criminal indictments will follow.