U.S. intelligence memo ties Nvidia’s Huang to alleged Chinese spy, FT reports
U.S. intelligence memo ties Nvidia’s Huang to alleged Chinese spy, FT reports
U.S. intelligence agencies believe Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with a Chinese national suspected of being recruited to spy for Beijing, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter.
According to a classified U.S. government memo drafted earlier this year and described to the newspaper, American intelligence concluded that Huang had been romantically involved with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company that is a customer of the U.S. semiconductor giant.
The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Alice Huang was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s premier civilian intelligence agency, the report said.
The memo was circulated among a tight circle of senior U.S. officials shortly before President Donald Trump traveled to Beijing for a bilateral summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to the Financial Times.
The White House and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment, the newspaper said. Nvidia declined to comment on the internal government memo or the assertions of an intimate relationship, pointing to previous statements that its chief executive meets "thousands of customer executives every year." Alice Huang could not be reached for comment.
Smuggling probe
The disclosures land amid escalating friction over Washington’s technology blockade against China and follow intensified scrutiny of Megaspeed, which was spun off from a Chinese gaming company in 2023.
Federal investigators have been probing Southeast Asian entities suspected of acting as conduits to illicitly divert advanced AI processors into China in violation of U.S. export restrictions. Nvidia had previously conducted an internal review into the allegations surrounding Megaspeed and concluded there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
The report also comes a day after senior Republican lawmakers requested that Jensen Huang appear for a closed-door briefing before the House China, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence committees. Lawmakers are seeking answers regarding a prior report by The New York Times that U.S. counterintelligence viewed him as the target of a Chinese influence operation, while examining Nvidia’s internal corporate security protocols.