Jensen Huang was agitated.
It was September 2025, and The New York Occasions had simply referred to as his firm a few Singaporean information heart agency referred to as Megaspeed that had been led by a Chinese language girl named Alice Huang, or Huang Le. The Occasions was reporting that Mr. Huang, the chief government of the chip maker Nvidia, had a detailed relationship together with her.
Mr. Huang, who Nvidia staff say might have a volcanic mood, needed to know what The Occasions was insinuating. Although he didn’t deny that he knew the lady, he was bothered by the suggestion that they is perhaps shut, folks accustomed to the dialogue stated.
Nvidia mounted an aggressive protection. Madison Huang, Mr. Huang’s daughter who acted as her father’s chief of employees, pressed the corporate’s communications group to push again forcefully. In addition they had reinforcements, a disaster communications agency referred to as Heller.
They insisted that Mr. Huang and the lady from Megaspeed simply had a enterprise relationship.
Over the subsequent 13 months, Mr. Huang caught along with his story, even after The Occasions reported final month that the U.S. had gathered intelligence displaying that Ms. Huang was secretly working with China’s prime spy company.
However final weekend, dealing with new revelations about the relationship, Mr. Huang lastly got here clear to Nvidia’s common counsel. He had been having an affair with the lady, in spite of everything, stated the folks accustomed to the discussions.
The connection with the Megaspeed government wasn’t Mr. Huang’s solely secret.
On Wednesday, a Occasions reporter referred to as Mr. Huang to ask him a few second extramarital relationship. This time, it was an affair with an government who reported to him.
Nvidia’s board of administrators quickly convened an emergency assembly to debate Mr. Huang’s future along with his firm. Nonetheless, it was unimaginable to consider Nvidia with out him.
Lower than 24 hours later, Mr. Huang resigned.
The revelations about Mr. Huang, 63, set off a cascade of occasions which have reverberated from Silicon Valley to Washington to Beijing. Administration officers are actually reconsidering A.I. export laws, which might damage some Silicon Valley companies however tilt the A.I. race with China decidedly in America’s favor.
It has additionally introduced into public view a feud amongst a number of senior administration officers and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent instructed CNBC that his division had been pushing Commerce for months to crack down on the circulate of U.S. know-how to China.
Now Nvidia, which was in some ways propping up the A.I. growth, which, in flip, was propping up the U.S. economic system, is working and not using a man many contemplate to be some of the indispensable executives within the historical past of American enterprise.
That is the story — based mostly on a 12 months of reporting, paperwork and discussions with greater than 100 folks, together with present and former Nvidia executives and authorities officers who spoke on the situation of anonymity — of how Mr. Huang’s secret slowly spilled into the open.
What’s Megaspeed?
Final fall, enterprise was booming for Nvidia. Its hovering inventory value had it inside a whisper of changing into the world’s first $5 trillion firm.
Mr. Huang joined Mr. Trump in September for a proper state dinner at Windsor Fort hosted by King Charles III. Mr. Trump lavished reward on Mr. Huang at a gathering of enterprise and tech leaders hosted by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“You’re taking on the world, Jensen,” Mr. Trump stated.
However at Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., a few of Mr. Huang’s advisers had been wrestling with The Occasions’s questions on Megaspeed. The corporate had bought greater than $2 billion of Nvidia know-how in a 12 months, making it one of many largest patrons of A.I. chips in Southeast Asia.
It was an instance of the sort of middlemen popping up throughout the area. Corporations like Megaspeed had been legally shopping for American chips and constructing A.I. information facilities that rented computing energy to Chinese language firms. However the U.S. authorities suspected that some, together with Megaspeed, had been breaking the legislation by funneling chips to China.
Nvidia’s gross sales from Singapore had been swelling. By final summer season, the island city-state accounted for 22 % of the corporate’s quarterly complete gross sales, or $10 billion, making it the second-largest chip shopping for area after the USA.
Over the earlier two years, Mr. Huang had been seen twice with Ms. Huang in public at trade gatherings. She waited behind him patiently in a pink gown as he handed out noodles from a restaurant in Taipei to onlookers and spoke to the Taiwanese press. Then she climbed into the automobile with him to be shuttled away.
A senior Nvidia official instructed The Occasions that the dinner attended by Mr. Huang, Ms. Huang and a number of other trade executives was a “enterprise dinner.”
On one other event, Ms. Huang was chatting at an trade social gathering at a Taipei bar when she supplied to ask Mr. Huang to hitch them. “She stated, ‘I guess you guys I can get Jensen right here,’ after which Jensen instantly confirmed up,” stated Parker Schmitt, who’s chief government of NetThunder, an information software program supplier. Shortly after, Mr. Huang arrived and drank a whiskey shot with the group. He left the social gathering, which he’d been invited to, shortly afterward with two different Nvidia executives who had joined him.
After the article about Megaspeed and Mr. Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang appeared that October, Nvidia modified the way it reported geographic gross sales. Singapore vanished from its monetary disclosures because it began reporting gross sales based mostly on “prospects’ headquarters” reasonably than “billing location.” The corporate had beforehand stated that giant prospects billed via Singapore, the place taxes might be decrease, however that merchandise “are nearly at all times shipped elsewhere.”
Late that month, Mr. Huang took a conference heart stage in Washington in his signature leather-based jacket and black denims. He trumpeted his firm’s lead in A.I. chips and praised Mr. Trump for specializing in rising the nation’s power provides. He thanked everybody for his or her work “making America nice once more.”
The following day, as Mr. Trump was flying to South Korea to fulfill with China’s chief Xi Jinping, the president instructed reporters he was planning to talk to Mr. Xi about Nvidia’s most superior A.I. chip, often known as Blackwell.
Some folks in authorities interpreted Mr. Trump’s feedback as a sign that he would possibly raise prohibitions on China’s entry to America’s finest know-how — an consequence that might be a boon to Nvidia’s enterprise, even because it flew within the face of longstanding coverage targets to restrict China’s entry to American know-how and defend America’s lead in synthetic intelligence. (A White Home spokesman declined to remark.)
The probabilities had been enormous for Mr. Huang. Although Mr. Trump had cleared the corporate to promote a few of its lower-performing chips to China, Beijing had banned tech firms from shopping for them. The provide of Blackwell chips had the potential to interrupt that deadlock.
However after Cupboard officers, together with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.S. commerce consultant, Jamieson Greer, objected on nationwide safety grounds, Mr. Trump deserted the concept.
Roughly a 12 months in the past, Mr. Trump was briefed about how American spy businesses had surveillance of Ms. Huang, the Megaspeed government, whom they’d decided was passing data to Chinese language intelligence companies. The surveillance revealed that she had developed a detailed relationship with Mr. Huang.
It was an alarming growth for nationwide safety officers who lengthy nervous that Mr. Huang was too nonchalant about issues that his chips might fall into the arms of the Chinese language army or intelligence.
Although Mr. Trump selected to not do something with the knowledge, it raised questions contained in the U.S. authorities about Mr. Huang’s judgment. It additionally raised the chance that Ms. Huang might have gathered perception via Mr. Huang into Mr. Trump’s considering on synthetic intelligence, an important concern of significance to Washington and Beijing.
For causes that stay unknown, authorities officers didn’t inform Mr. Huang concerning the intelligence. Regulation enforcement officers generally warn People who’re being focused by a overseas authorities’s intelligence service — a apply often known as a “defensive briefing.” In weighing whether or not to offer such a warning, officers sometimes contemplate the dangers of tipping off the goal of their very own surveillance, which on this case would have been Megaspeed’s Ms. Huang.
Chips for China
Mr. Huang didn’t abandon his imaginative and prescient of promoting chips to China. He continued to argue that that may make Chinese language firms depend upon American know-how and create competitors for China’s tech big, Huawei. It will even be good for his enterprise.
In December, he returned to Washington to press his case. He met with Mr. Trump on the White Home and proposed promoting a much less highly effective chip to China. Generally known as the H200, it was a era older than the Blackwell, which was restricted to the USA.
Mr. Trump was open to the concept, however he needed one thing in return: a 25 % lower for the U.S. authorities of any chips bought to China. Mr. Huang agreed.
By March, pre-purchase orders from Chinese language prospects had been rolling in. On the firm’s annual convention in San Jose, Calif., Mr. Huang instructed a resort ballroom full of greater than 100 reporters and influencers, together with a girl who refers to herself because the “A.I. princess,” that Nvidia was receiving buy commitments from China and beginning to manufacture chips to promote.
In Washington, Mr. Rubio began to place collectively an replace concerning the surveillance of Ms. Huang. The classified memo, based mostly on extremely delicate intelligence, outlined Ms. Huang’s shut relationship with the Nvidia founder and her contacts with China’s civilian spy company, the Ministry of State Safety.
The memo was circulated to solely a handful of Cupboard officers. It was despatched because the administration made plans for the president to go to Beijing in Might for a summit with Mr. Xi. When it got here time to increase invites to greater than a dozen chief executives for the journey, Mr. Huang was left off the record.
However with little warning, Mr. Trump, who had seen information protection of Mr. Huang’s exclusion, requested the Nvidia government to fulfill up with Air Power One at a refueling cease in Alaska.
When Mr. Rubio discovered of the invitation, whereas en path to Alaska, he briefed the president on the intelligence displaying Mr. Huang had a relationship with a Chinese language intelligence asset. Mr. Trump was not significantly moved by the knowledge. As a substitute, he celebrated Mr. Huang with a social media publish after the chief government boarded the aircraft, saying it was an honor to have “the Nice Jensen Huang” on the journey to China.
On the bottom in Beijing, Mr. Trump stated he mentioned gross sales of Nvidia chips to China with Mr. Xi. The Chinese language authorities had been reluctant to offer its approval to purchases of the much less superior H200 chips. However the dialog didn’t seem to steer China to permit its firms to purchase the Nvidia chips.
Some officers in Washington nervous that Mr. Huang, to interrupt the deadlock, would push for approval to promote the extra superior Blackwells.
Throughout Nvidia’s all-hands assembly in August, he was requested what he thought of to be Nvidia’s biggest threat.
“It’s Washington, D.C.,” he stated. “Insurance policies which are made which are uninformed have an effect on us, they usually might have an effect on us in a enterprise method, and that might be irritating and irritating.”
Halfway via the assembly, his telephone buzzed.
“There are solely two folks on this planet that may name me,” he stated. “Considered one of them is President Trump.”
He picked up Mr. Trump’s name and stepped away.
The key slips
Mr. Huang didn’t realize it, however his secret was beginning to spill.
Late final month, The Occasions reached out to Nvidia for touch upon a report that may publicly reveal for the primary time that Ms. Huang was being surveilled. U.S. intelligence had believed she was an asset for Chinese language intelligence who was feeding data to Beijing and was in a detailed relationship with Mr. Huang. (Amongst U.S. intelligence and nationwide safety officers, the connection was routinely described extra pointedly as an affair. )
Even after The Occasions reported in October 2025 that Megaspeed was underneath investigation for smuggling chips into China, Nvidia had stored doing enterprise with the corporate. And Mr. Huang had stored up his relationship with Ms. Huang, in line with U.S. officers who reviewed the intelligence.
Megaspeed’s sister firm in Malaysia purchased a minimum of $4.8 billion price of superior A.I. tools containing Nvidia chips and know-how from June 2024 to February 2026, in line with commerce information obtained from ImportGenius, a commerce platform.
Mr. Huang instructed folks round him that it was the primary time he was studying that the U.S. authorities had been monitoring his relationship with Ms. Huang.
Nvidia insisted that the corporate that employed Ms. Huang, Megaspeed, was like every other regional buyer and that it had beforehand investigated and debunked claims that the Singaporean firm was smuggling chips to China.
(China has rejected the espionage claims. Alice Huang, the Chinese language government accused of spying for Beijing, has not responded to requests for remark.)
Mr. Huang jumped to his personal protection. In an interview with Bloomberg News, he stated that his interactions with Ms. Huang had been “all fully regular and common.”
Different shops jumped on the story. Nvidia roped in Heller, the disaster communications agency that had been working for the Huang household since early 2025, to assist as soon as once more. The corporate represents high-profile people, with previous shoppers together with Harvey Weinstein and Anthony Weiner, in addition to the enterprise facet of The Occasions.
On Nov. 6, The Occasions reported on Mr. Rubio’s memo and stated U.S. intelligence had recognized her as working with the Chinese intelligence service.
Later that evening, The Financial Times reported the U.S. authorities believed Mr. Huang’s relationship with the lady was romantic. Nvidia declined to remark.
Tim Teter, Nvidia’s common counsel, who had been defending Mr. Huang, went to Mr. Huang’s home in Woodside, Calif. Mr. Huang confessed, stated folks accustomed to the occasions that evening.
Madison, his daughter, was flying to South Korea on the time. She was scheduled to take part in an A.I. occasion and meet native dignitaries. However the second she landed, she was instructed the information and inspired to fly again dwelling.
Mr. Huang’s betrayal precipitated deep ache inside Nvidia. His household — together with Madison; his son, Spencer; and son-in-law Nico Caprez — labored in outstanding roles on the firm. He had been married to Lori Huang for greater than 40 years.
After Mr. Huang’s confession, Mr. Teter urged Nvidia’s board to behave. The board and Mr. Huang individually drafted public statements. The board stated it “had full confidence in Jensen,” even because it deliberate to rent an outdoor legislation agency to analyze the matter.
Mr. Huang apologized in a message to the corporate. “I used to be untrue to my spouse,” he stated. “My actions damage her and our kids. There isn’t a excuse for what I did. I’m deeply sorry.”
He promised that he would earn again the arrogance of staff and the board. Privately, he assured folks round him, together with Mr. Teter, who spoke with the board, that there have been no different infidelities.
Bloomberg Information earlier reported on Mr. Teter’s go to. The Info, a know-how information web site, earlier reported on the board’s deliberations.
Over the subsequent few days, Mr. Huang obtained texts and calls of encouragement from mates, reminiscent of Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and the financier Larry Fink. President Trump additionally called him on Tuesday with a phrase of recommendation: Combat.
Some allies started to make plans to show the tide. Mr. Huang instructed lots of them that the lady wasn’t a spy. She was only a enterprise buyer.
However 4 days later, The Occasions contacted the corporate and Mr. Huang about another affair. This one was with a girl who instantly reported to him, Kimberly Powell, a 48-year-old who led Nvidia’s well being division. The 2 had been caught on digicam in an affectionate second throughout Nvidia’s annual convention in San Jose.
The corporate declined to remark. Mr. Huang, who was reached by telephone, stated, “I don’t assume you ought to be speaking to me instantly.” Then, he hung up.
After the information broke, the 10-member board referred to as an emergency assembly. Members referred to as in from distant areas and deliberated over a call none of them ever thought they must make.
The revelation of one other infidelity confirmed that Mr. Huang, who had extolled the corporate’s code of conduct guidelines over time, had been violating them. First, there was the connection with a buyer. Then, there was the connection with an worker.
However on this planet of company governance, the worst factor a chief government can do is lie, particularly in a disaster. It’s a cause they get fired.
On Thursday morning, the corporate stated Mr. Huang had resigned. The board had named Colette Kress, the corporate’s chief monetary officer, as interim chief government officer.
Mr. Huang must give up his life’s work.
In a collection of in depth interviews final month with Emily Chang of Bloomberg TV, Mr. Huang acknowledged it was a excessive stress function that required sacrifice.
“It shouldn’t be a straightforward job,” he stated. “It shouldn’t be a job you’re taking with no consideration.”
He added that he hoped to be with the corporate for one more 20 years.
Ryan Mac, Georgia Gee and Kalley Huang contributed reporting.
