November 13, 2026, (Inside AI) — Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of Nvidia, resigned on Thursday after an extramarital affair with a woman suspected by US intelligence of working for Chinese spy services, plunging the world's most valuable chipmaker into a national security controversy that has reached the White House and Congress.
The Nvidia board accepted Huang's resignation as CEO, president and director on Wednesday night, naming chief financial officer Colette Kress as interim chief executive while it searches for a permanent replacement. Huang, who led the company for 33 years, told staff over the weekend that he "was unfaithful to my wife."
The woman at the center of the storm is Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a Hong Kong resident and former chief executive of Singapore-registered data center operator Megaspeed. US intelligence officials suspect she was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to gather information from Jensen Huang, according to reports in the Financial Times and The New York Times. The two are not related.
No one has been charged with any offense. Nvidia's board said it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, and it has opened an independent investigation. Jensen Huang has denied compromising national security or Nvidia secrets. China's foreign ministry called the spy allegations baseless "smears."
The affair matters far beyond a corporate scandal because Nvidia sits at the center of the US-China artificial intelligence rivalry. Its chips power advanced AI systems and US military equipment. Jensen Huang also served on President Donald Trump's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and joined Trump's May trip to Beijing as a late addition, boarding Air Force One in Alaska at the president's invitation.
Investigators want to know whether Chinese intelligence used the relationship to learn about Nvidia's hardware allocation, supply timelines and lobbying on export rules. They are also examining whether Alice Huang's access helped steer Nvidia sales to Chinese buyers. The Information reported that her relationship helped direct at least $7.5 billion in Nvidia sales to China, a figure CNBC said it could not verify.
Megaspeed, the company Alice Huang once led, has drawn scrutiny since 2024. A Malaysian affiliate purchased at least $4.8 billion worth of advanced AI equipment containing Nvidia technology between June 2024 and February 2026, according to trade records cited by The New York Times. The company rents out computing power built on Nvidia chips from data centers in Malaysia and Indonesia, allowing Chinese firms such as Alibaba to access restricted hardware without importing it directly.
Singapore's Home Affairs ministry said on Thursday that Alice Huang was investigated for possible false declarations related to server purchases but was not investigated for espionage. Police found insufficient evidence of offenses in February 2026, issuing her a stern warning and a re-entry ban. Megaspeed denies illegal transfers to China, and Nvidia says its checks found no evidence of chip diversion and cut off Megaspeed in June 2025.
The US House Select Committee on China has called Alice Huang a "publicly reported Chinese intelligence asset" and asked her to attend a November 18 briefing. Jensen Huang has agreed to brief Congress before Thanksgiving, according to Representative Brian Mast. Lawmakers from both parties, including Republicans Mast and John Moolenaar and Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, want testimony.
The resignation also raises questions about Nvidia's leadership and its lobbying posture. Jensen Huang had pushed for looser export curbs and successfully lobbied for approvals to sell H200 chips to China, which Trump approved in December 2025 with 25% of proceeds going to the US government. About 10 Chinese firms were cleared to buy the chips, but none had shipped by mid-May as Beijing held orders back.
The board's investigation does not mention Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice-president of healthcare, whom The New York Times reported had a relationship with Jensen Huang. Reuters reported a third relationship with another employee. Neither has been confirmed, and Powell has not been accused of any security wrongdoing.
Kress, the interim CEO, inherits a company valued at trillions of dollars and a board searching for a permanent leader amid a federal probe. Trump said the FBI is looking into the matter but backed Jensen Huang, saying he believed the CEO did not know Alice Huang was a spy.
The episode echoes past cases where private relationships entangled technology leaders in espionage concerns, but the scale is unprecedented. Nvidia's chips are the scarce commodity of the AI age, and control over their flow is a instrument of statecraft. A CEO's personal life has rarely intersected so directly with the machinery of export controls and intelligence gathering.
For now, the facts remain contested. The spy allegations have not been tested in court. Megaspeed's ownership and funding remain opaque. And the question of whether any sensitive information actually passed through the relationship is unresolved. What is clear is that Washington is treating the affair as a security matter, not a tabloid one.
Sofia spent years studying how machines parse human language before pivoting to cover the systems now rewriting it. She reads technical papers the way others read news and looking for what the numbers are actually saying beneath the headlines.
