Nvidia's board opens an independent investigation after reports about Jensen Huang
A committee of independent directors with outside counsel will run the review; the board says it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised. Congress had asked for a briefing.
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Nvidia’s board of directors announced an independent investigation on 8 November, following what it called “recent reporting” that founder and chief executive Jensen Huang “has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort”. The board said a committee of independent directors, advised by outside counsel, would oversee the review. It said it had “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised”, that Huang supports the review and has agreed to cooperate, and that “The Board has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team”.
The same day Huang emailed employees, and Nvidia published the message. In it he apologised to his family and to staff, wrote “My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do,” and acknowledged that he had been unfaithful to his wife. He said he supported the board’s investigation and asked for his family’s privacy.
The reporting the board referred to began in late October. The New York Times reported that US authorities were investigating a Megaspeed International executive, Alice Huang, who is not related to him, over alleged spying for China. According to Bloomberg, Huang said Nvidia’s dealings with Megaspeed were “normal and not unusual” and that Nvidia had studied all of Megaspeed’s GPU deployments. A summary of later coverage attributes to the Times a claim that the two had a “close” relationship and that President Trump was briefed on it, and to the Wall Street Journal a report that officials in at least three countries feared she was passing information to the Chinese government. Nvidia said that “Meetings with customers are part of a CEO’s job”; the same summary says China’s government called the claims “groundless speculation”. These were the newspapers’ reported allegations, not findings.
On 5 November, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Brian Mast, John Moolenaar, chairman of the Select Committee on China, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Rick Crawford wrote to Huang. They requested a closed-door briefing on 18 November about his dealings with Alice Huang, whom their release describes as a “publicly reported” PRC intelligence asset, and about Nvidia’s protections against foreign espionage. They asked him to accept the date or propose another by 11 November.
Nvidia’s chips sit at the centre of US export policy toward China, which is why the story reached Congress. Earlier entries cover H200 shipments to China and a smuggling prosecution. The board’s findings and Huang’s response to the committees were still to come.