Donald Trump has vouched for the good faith of Nvidia’s chief Jensen Huang, the giant in AI chips, who, in his view, “had no idea” that his mistress could spy on him for China.
“I asked him, and he said that he had no idea that the person in question was a spy,” the American president said at the White House, adding that he had spoken on Monday with the executive, who has become an influential informal adviser on AI, “to see if he was doing well.”
Jensen Huang, a 63-year-old American-Taiwanese, acknowledged an extramarital affair on Sunday before Nvidia’s board of directors, which launched an independent investigation. U.S. intelligence suspects the woman involved, Alice Huang (no relation), of having been recruited by Beijing to approach him.
“The story of a so-called Chinese spy is nothing but defamation and baseless slander,” replied Monday Guo Jiakun, spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy.
The suspect, Alice Huang, was a senior executive at Megaspeed, a data-center company based in Singapore, suspected of diverting Nvidia’s advanced chips to China.
Nvidia’s stock fell 4.27% on Monday in a rising market, while shareholder-law firms announced investigations and a Republican senator demanded investigations by Congress.
“I think he is suffering greatly. More because of his family, of the wife he loves,” added Donald Trump, a few days before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, a technology hub in southern China, where he promised to bring the Nvidia chief.
According to The New York Times, the president had been informed about a year ago of the suspicions against Alice Huang, without acting. “I’ve heard about it and I’ve read a bit about it, but not for very long,” the president said. He claimed not to have heard about it when Jensen Huang accompanied him to China in May. “I know the FBI is handling it in relation to something else but I think he’ll be fine,” he added.
Meanwhile, the FBI declined to comment.
At the end of 2025, Nvidia’s chief had secured from Donald Trump permission to sell to China its H200 chip, an older generation, with the U.S. government taking 25% of the proceeds while continuing to block the export of the group’s latest products.
On Wall Street, the market capitalization of the world’s second-largest company fell by about $200 billion, while other chipmakers surged, such as AMD (+13.26%).
The fate of the entire AI sector is tied to that of the Santa Clara-based group (California), which has notably committed hundreds of billions of dollars to its own clients, in the form of equity stakes, loans or guarantees.
The affair comes as AI stocks had plunged last week on Wall Street after the midterm elections, which increased the likelihood of regulation of data centers, before rebounding on Monday.
