How Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's extramarital affair could cause collateral
damage in Washington
[November 12, 2026]
By JOSH BOAK, JESSE BEDAYN, CHAN HO-HIM, EILEEN NG and
ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 jackets and fluff of gray hair. He
runs the company Nvidia, which produces highly coveted computer chips.
That's landed him on a late-night-phone-call basis with President Donald
Trump, a promoter of the industry.
But Huang was also liaising with a Chinese businessperson who has
allegedly fed intelligence — as well as advanced chips — to China. 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 Department of
Justice has opened its own investigation. Nvidia, one of the most
valuable companies in the world, is conducting an internal review.
Some expect the technology to reshape human civilization by imbuing
computers with the vast powers of creation and analysis, and Trump has
repeated that “whoever wins AI, wins." Nvidia is the backbone of
America's plans for dominating the field.
When asked about Jensen Huang's affair, Trump said this week that he had
spoken to the tech executive as the scandal grew.
“I think he’ll be in good shape," 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
Alice Huang, 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 Huang
With 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 AI chips developed in the United States.
Last year, Megaspeed faced scrutiny from the U.S. Commerce Department
over its alleged skirting of U.S. export laws and routing of a large
amount of advanced Nvidia chips to Chinese users. The company denied
those allegations. U.S. intelligence officials eventually concluded that
Alice Huang had spied for China, according to The New York Times.
The Commerce Department's investigation 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 Alice Huang, according to a person familiar with the
matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing law enforcement
inquiry.
Megaspeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment on
Tuesday, and The Associated Press was unable to reach Alice Huang.
Jensen Huang has apologized to his company about 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.”
Trump has been close with Jensen Huang
After their first dinner together at Mar-a-Lago in early 2025, Trump
latched onto Jensen Huang as a tech titan positioned to deliver on the
president’s own promises of an economic renaissance.
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President Donald Trump, right, presents the National Medal of
Science to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during an event at the U.S.
Institute of Peace, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia
Demaree Nikhinson, File)
The computer chips produced by Nvidia would essentially turn data
centers 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.
Trump would regularly phone 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, reindustrializing the
United States, of protection, of national security,” Jensen 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 fund our communities, create more jobs.”
Trump saw his political fortunes — and that of the country — in
Huang's Nvidia. Huang joined Trump on Air Force One for a state
visit to Beijing earlier this year. Just last month, Trump awarded
Huang with 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
Trump’s White House ballroom.
Multiple estimates suggest that more than half of the stock market
gains during Trump's second term came from the growth of the AI
industry and the construction of data centers.
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 scrutiny
While 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 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.
Those 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.
Huang has so far refused to appear, and Democrats responded angrily
when his infidelity came to light, raising concerns that a bulwark
of American technology may have been compromised by the Chinese
government.
Warren said in a statement Monday 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 Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, Warren continued, “raises
important questions NVIDIA must answer about the extent to which
these activities were related."
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Chan reported from Hong Kong and Ng from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Associated Press journalists Wu Jia in Beijing, Didi Tang in
Washington and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Ga., contributed to this
report.
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