Nvidia CEO Jensen had romantic relationship with Chinese spy Alice, report says US has intel to prove it
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is one of the most influential figures in the artificial intelligence race today. His company's chips power AI systems around the world and are central to the US-China technology rivalry. As the stakes get higher, a new report suggests that Jensen may have inadvertently developed a romantic relationship with a woman sent by China to spy on him and that the US government may have some evidence to back this claim.
Top policymakers in the Trump administration were sent a memo last spring informing them of the said intelligence, according to a report from The New York Times. The undercover agent — Alice Huang — who worked as a senior executive at the Singapore-based company Megaspeed, had links or more precisely, she was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) to spy on the Nvidia chief, the report said citing people briefed on the intelligence.
The US government has barred Nvidia from selling its advanced chips to China. The Chinese spy agency possibly wanted to gather insider information about American AI chips and — potentially — influence Nvidia to make its most advanced processors available to China, through the covert operation. The report also mentions that Republican leaders of three influential House committees have requested a closed-door briefing with Jensen later this month about his alleged interactions with Alice Huang.
China's Ministry of State Security — who reportedly assigned Alice Huang to spy on Jensen — is the country's top spy agency. It was established in the year 1983 and handles both domestic political security and international intelligence. Seen as a major rival to American CIA, the MSS has been linked to multiple cases of espionage and has been known to — recently — use AI to select and profile potential targets. The agency is estimated to have hundreds of thousands of agents.
It has also become more visible inside China. In 2023, it launched an official WeChat account to encourage citizens to report suspected foreign spies. Its chief, Chen Yixin, has argued that China needs to control AI to protect political stability, defend against cyberattacks and compete militarily with the US.Who is Alice?
Alice Huang is said to be a Chinese business executive. She is not related to Jensen Huang and works at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data centre company spun off from a Chinese gaming firm. The report says she is well spoken in English and has relationships with senior figures in the AI chip industry, including executives at Nvidia and Gigabyte. She has attended industry conferences and private executive dinners.
Megaspeed's sudden push into AI infrastructure is also drawing attention. From around June 2024 to February 2026, Megaspeed’s sister company in Malaysia is said to have purchased at least $4.8 billion worth of advanced AI equipment, including Nvidia chips and other technology, according to trade records obtained from ImportGenius and cited in the NYT report.
Also, the company has been building data centres in Southeast Asia and renting computing capacity to China’s Alibaba, per the report. This arrangement may have provided a route for Chinese businesses to access advanced Nvidia chips that the US restricts from being sold directly to China, though we do not know of any known cases so far.
The report links Alice to a network of companies and investors around Shanghai and Zhejiang that moved from mobile video games into data centres using local political ties.What Nvidia is saying?
Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo has said Jensen Huang's interactions with Alice Huang were not unusual and were consistent with routine customer meetings. He also said Nvidia does not share classified information with customers. China's embassy meanwhile has rejected the allegations as unsubstantiated. As of now, there haven’t been any words from Alice Huang nor from the CIA or the White House.
The allegations are based on US intelligence assessments described by people briefed on the surveillance to The New York Times, not a publicly established finding in court.- Ends
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