Updated Nov 13, 2026, 9:02 AM New York time (EST): Jensen Huang has resigned as Nvidia CEO; the latest developments are added below.
Nvidia's board has opened an independent investigation after reports that Jensen Huang was the target of Chinese intelligence. The personal scandal is the headline, but the questions with real consequences sit elsewhere: what Megaspeed was doing with billions of dollars of Nvidia chips, whether export controls can reach rented computing power, and how a $4.5 trillion company handles key-person risk.
On Sunday, November 8, Nvidia's board said a committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, would investigate "recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort." The board said it had "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised," that Huang supports the review, and that it has confidence in him and his leadership team. The same day, Huang told employees in a memo that he had been unfaithful to his wife and that "there is no excuse for what I did."
The woman at the center of the reporting is Alice Huang (no relation), an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company that has been one of Nvidia's largest customers in Southeast Asia. The New York Times reported on Friday, November 6, that a memo circulated among senior Trump administration officials last spring cited intelligence that she had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security, the country's main civilian spy agency, to gather information on Nvidia's chief executive. China's foreign ministry called the allegation "unsubstantiated" and a smear. No one has accused Jensen Huang of a crime, and no charges have been announced.
What has actually been established
It helps to separate what is on the record from what is attributed to unnamed officials.
On the record
- Nvidia's board statement announcing the independent investigation and its view that it has no reason to believe secrets were compromised.
- Huang's memo to staff acknowledging the affair and apologising to his family, colleagues, board and shareholders.
- A request from the Republican leaders of three House committees, including John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on China, for a closed-door briefing from Huang. Reporting by Yahoo Finance says the committees proposed November 18 and asked for an answer by November 11.
- President Trump's public support for Huang remaining CEO, given to reporters on Sunday.
Attributed to anonymous sources
- That U.S. intelligence agencies determined Alice Huang was working for China's Ministry of State Security and had her under electronic surveillance for at least a year (The New York Times; NBC News cited a person familiar with the matter).
- That Beijing's goal was to learn more about American AI chips and potentially influence Nvidia to push for its most advanced chips to be sold to China (The New York Times, citing people briefed on the intelligence).
- That Trump was briefed on the relationship last year and chose not to act (The New York Times).
Those distinctions matter because the board's own investigation, not press reporting, will decide Huang's future, and it has not set a completion date.
Why Megaspeed is the real story
Megaspeed was under scrutiny long before anyone outside Washington knew about a relationship. In October 2025, The New York Times reported that the Commerce Department was examining whether Megaspeed, a 2023 spinoff of a Chinese gaming company, was helping Chinese firms sidestep U.S. export restrictions. Singapore's police separately confirmed to CNBC at the time that it was investigating Megaspeed for suspected breaches of Singapore law. Bloomberg later reported that U.S. authorities were looking at inconsistencies in Megaspeed's chip inventory and data center footprint, and at its ownership structure.
Nvidia's position then was firm. A spokesperson told CNBC that the company had visited multiple Megaspeed sites and confirmed that it was "running a small commercial cloud, like many other companies throughout the world, as allowed by U.S. export control rules." Nvidia said it had found no reason to believe products had been diverted.
That last phrase is the crux. U.S. export controls on advanced AI chips are built around physical shipments: who a chip is sold to and where it goes. They are far weaker on who uses the chip once it is installed. According to The New York Times, Megaspeed has been building data centers in Southeast Asia and renting their computing power to Alibaba. Bloomberg reported that Alibaba reaches Megaspeed's chips in Malaysia through a Singaporean entity controlled by a Cayman Islands company that Alibaba ultimately owns. The chips stay in Malaysia; only the training and inference workloads cross the border.
Under current rules, that kind of remote access is generally not illegal. Bloomberg has reported that the enforcement arm of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is now compiling a list of countries where Chinese companies rent restricted chips remotely, separate from its list of countries where chips are physically smuggled. It is an unusual exercise precisely because the first activity is lawful. Whether BIS even has the authority to restrict cloud computing contracts, rather than the movement of goods, is an open legal question.
So the intelligence allegations land on top of an unresolved policy gap. If the reporting is accurate, China's spy agency was interested in the chief executive of the company that sells the hardware, at the same time as a company linked to its target was buying that hardware at scale and renting it to a Chinese tech giant in a way export rules did not clearly forbid. Even if no rule was broken and no secret was shared, that combination is exactly what export-control hawks in Congress have warned about.
Why Huang's China advocacy is now under a harder light
Huang has argued for years that Washington should let American chipmakers sell into China, on the grounds that U.S. hardware competing there would slow Huawei. According to The New York Times, he persuaded the administration in 2025 to reverse a ban on a less powerful AI chip for China, and later struck a deal to sell Nvidia's second-most-powerful chip there with the U.S. government taking a 25 percent cut of sales. Trump considered going further with Nvidia's Blackwell chips before backing away.
There is no public evidence that this advocacy was shaped by anyone other than Huang and Nvidia's commercial interest, and Huang has also said publicly that China should not get Nvidia's best chips, such as Blackwell or the forthcoming Rubin. An Nvidia spokesperson told the Times that the company does not share classified information with customers and that customers do not ask it to lobby the U.S. government on China policy. Nvidia has also pointed out that Beijing has restricted imports of its data center products and promoted domestic alternatives.
But the reporting gives critics a new argument. The question lawmakers are most likely to press in a briefing is not about Huang's private life. It is whether Nvidia's earlier assurances about Megaspeed held up, and how much weight Washington should give the company's views on future export licenses.
The market reaction, in context
Nvidia shares traded about 3.4 percent lower overnight, near $180, after the board's announcement, according to Reuters figures cited by Yahoo Finance, against a Friday close of $186.64. That move is modest next to what came before it. The stock had already fallen for five straight weeks from a $233.95 close on October 2 and dropped as much as 9.3 percent on November 5 amid a sector-wide selloff after the midterm elections, Gulf News reported.
Direct exposure to China is also smaller than it once was. Using Nvidia's customer-headquarters basis for reporting revenue, customers based in China and Hong Kong accounted for 9.1 percent of fiscal 2026 sales, down from 19.2 percent a year earlier, and the company's outlook for the October quarter excludes China data center compute revenue. Megaspeed's own contribution is harder to pin down: reporting has put purchases by Megaspeed and its Malaysian affiliate at several billion dollars since 2024, but those figures describe what the buyer spent on equipment containing Nvidia chips, not revenue Nvidia has disclosed from that customer.
The bigger financial risk is not lost China sales but leadership. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has run it ever since. The company has not publicly named a successor. A board that opens a formal investigation into its founder's conduct is signalling that it takes its oversight duty seriously; it is also, by definition, keeping open the possibility of an outcome no one at Nvidia has publicly planned for.
What could go differently than expected
Several caveats cut against the most dramatic readings. The intelligence assessments have not been published, and the main accounts rely on unnamed officials. The board says it has seen nothing to suggest secrets were compromised. Remote rental of chips, as described, appears to have been lawful. And the administration's top official has publicly backed Huang. It is entirely possible the investigation concludes with a governance finding and no change at the top.
Equally, the political ground is shifting. Bloomberg has reported that the Commerce Department previously held back draft rules aimed at diversion through Malaysia and Thailand. Congressional pressure arising from this case could revive them, or push for legislation that treats remote access to restricted chips the way export rules treat physical shipments.
What to watch next
- November 11: the reported deadline for Huang to accept or reschedule the House committees' closed-door briefing.
- November 17: Nvidia's October-quarter earnings, where analysts are expected to ask about the investigation, Megaspeed and China licensing.
- November 18: the proposed date for the congressional briefing.
- Any BIS action on remote access: a rule, guidance or list targeting rented compute would matter more to the AI chip market than the outcome of one CEO's personal scandal.
- The board's findings: any sign of a successor search would change the risk picture for Nvidia far more than a few percent of overnight trading.
The affair is what made this a front-page story. The lasting question is whether U.S. export controls, written for chips in boxes, can govern chips that never leave a data center in Malaysia but still do work for customers in China. Nvidia's board can investigate its CEO. Only Washington can answer that.
New developments
Wednesday, November 11 to Friday, November 13: Huang resigns
Huang is out. According to Nvidia's Form 8-K, on November 11 the board "accepted the resignation" of Jensen Huang as president, chief executive and director, effective immediately. In its November 12 announcement, Nvidia named chief financial officer Colette Kress interim CEO; she remains CFO. Harvey C. Jones, a director since 1993 and a former Synopsys CEO, became the board's first-ever chair. The board will consider internal and external candidates for the permanent job. Neither document gives a reason for the departure or any separation terms.
How it happened. On the evening of November 11 the New York Times reported, citing five people who worked at the company, that Huang had also had a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of health care, who reported to him. Powell has not commented. Within hours the Wall Street Journal reported that the board was preparing to oust Huang, and Reuters confirmed through a source that the board met that day to decide. Under Nvidia's bylaws the CEO can be removed "with or without cause" by a majority of directors, Reuters noted. The BBC reported that a vote was not needed because Huang resigned. Separately, the Times reported that President Trump had urged Huang in a call on Tuesday, November 10, to fight for his job.
Investigations. The board's independent investigation is being run by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, led by former Manhattan U.S. attorney Joon Kim, according to the BBC. Attorney General Todd Blanche said on November 12 that the Justice Department had not yet determined whether Alice Huang was a spy and that the FBI was investigating. Semafor reported, citing two administration officials, that the Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation focused on Nvidia, separate from inquiries touching Megaspeed and Supermicro, with no indication of plans to charge Nvidia or Huang criminally. A shareholder securities class action filed on November 9 alleges investors were misled; those are allegations, not findings.
Megaspeed. Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said on November 12 that Alice Huang was barred from re-entering the country after authorities found she had given inaccurate information to downplay her role in Megaspeed, although they concluded in February that there was insufficient evidence she had committed the declaration offenses under investigation, CNBC reported. Malaysia's trade ministry said it is investigating whether a local Megaspeed subsidiary re-exported chips. Megaspeed's chief executive said the company takes its U.S. export-control obligations "extremely seriously."
Washington. The Republican chairs of the House Foreign Affairs, China and Intelligence committees sent a second request on November 12 for Huang, Nvidia general counsel Tim Teter and Commerce Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler to brief Congress, and urged passage of four export-control bills in the defense authorization bill. Rep. Brian Mast said Huang agreed to a closed-door briefing before lawmakers leave for Thanksgiving on November 20. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has agreed to appear voluntarily before the Senate Banking Committee. House Speaker Mike Johnson said there is a "developing consensus" in Congress on limiting chip exports to China.
Markets. Nvidia shares closed down 4.3% on November 12, Reuters reported, while AMD and Broadcom rose about 6% each. Huang remains one of Nvidia's largest shareholders with about 3.6% of the stock.
Our analysis of why the ouster was about more than the affairs, and how the competing explanations stack up against the evidence, is here: Analysis: Jensen Huang's Nvidia Ouster Was About More Than an Affair. Who Could Be Behind It?
Monday, November 9
Nvidia shares slide before the U.S. open. Nvidia was down 4.8 percent in premarket trading on Monday, CNBC reported, and its shares fell about 4.5 percent in Frankfurt, according to The Guardian. That is a steeper move than the roughly 3.4 percent overnight decline described above. Analysts quoted by both outlets mostly expect Huang to keep his job for now, while warning that the board's findings and congressional inquiries could hang over the stock. Regular U.S. trading had not opened when this update was written.
China denies the allegations again. At a regular briefing on Monday, foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said: "The narrative of a so-called Chinese spy is entirely baseless vilification and smearing," AP reported.
Megaspeed has not commented on the latest reports. Megaspeed did not respond to Reuters on Monday, a public holiday in Singapore, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the intelligence claims or confirm whether Alice Huang still works at the company, according to a Reuters explainer. In October, Megaspeed told The New York Times that its "current leadership" takes the allegations "extremely seriously," that it had hired outside counsel for an internal investigation and that it had told the U.S. government it would cooperate, The Guardian reported. The company has separately denied diverting chips, saying inspections by the Commerce Department, Malaysia's trade ministry and Nvidia found "no evidence of any violations," according to CNBC.
Sunday, November 8
Report: Rubio oversaw the classified memo. The New York Times reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the drafting of a "highly classified memo" last spring that warned top Trump administration officials that Huang was in a close relationship with a woman U.S. officials had concluded was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security. The Times cited multiple people briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity. It said the memo drew on electronic surveillance of Alice Huang and went to officials with high-level security clearances before Trump's trip to China in May (New York Times, bilingual edition; also reported by CNBC). According to the Times, Huang was first left off the list of executives invited on that trip, and it is unclear whether that was connected to the memo. Trump later asked him to join.
The memo itself has not been published, and VibeCodAI has not independently verified the intelligence assessment it reportedly contains. A State Department spokesman and a White House spokeswoman declined to comment to the Times, and Alice Huang did not respond to its requests. Nvidia has said Huang's interactions with her were "not unusual or unexpected," were consistent with his meetings with other customers, and that customers like Megaspeed do not receive classified business information. Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said on October 31 that its government had conducted no investigation into Alice Huang's alleged intelligence ties. Its police investigation of Megaspeed is a separate matter and is still under way.
Huang and Nvidia say he stays on as CEO. In his message to staff, Huang also wrote: "I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America's national security," CNBC reported. His message did not name Megaspeed or Alice Huang. Nvidia told CNBC: "Today's news will not slow NVIDIA. Jensen is committed to continuing to lead NVIDIA as CEO without interruption." The board said it "will provide further updates as appropriate."
Trump: "I haven't heard he's done anything wrong." Speaking to reporters, Trump said he had not discussed the allegations with Huang. "I just know he's a fine person, but you never know what is going on," he said, according to Bloomberg. When asked whether Huang would join his Asia trip next week, he said, "I don't know, but I'd certainly take him," Axios reported. That trip may include a meeting with Xi Jinping around the APEC summit in Shenzhen on November 18–19, The Guardian reported. That is the same date the House chairs proposed for Huang's briefing.
Pressure in Congress widens. Sen. Chris Coons, who is in line to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, wrote on X on Saturday that "Congress will investigate and get answers." Rep. Seth Magaziner called for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to testify alongside Huang. Sen. John Cornyn called "outrageous" a Times report that the administration had approved a Chinese firm, New Matrix, to assemble chips for Nvidia in Beijing, CNBC reported. The Times said it found little evidence of meaningful operations at that firm's listed address.
Correction
An earlier version of this article said The New York Times reported the existence of the spring memo on Monday. The Times first reported the memo on Friday, November 6, according to CNBC, and reported Rubio's role on Sunday, November 8. The text above has been corrected.
What to watch now
- Tuesday, November 17: Nvidia's third-quarter fiscal 2027 results at about 4:20 p.m. New York time (EST), with the earnings call at 5 p.m. (EST), the first on-the-record questioning of the new leadership.
- Wednesday, November 18: Kress's first all-hands meeting with employees as interim CEO.
- Before November 20: Huang's closed-door congressional briefing, and Lutnick's Senate Banking Committee appearance.
- The Wachtell findings, any separation or clawback terms filed with the SEC, and whether the FBI reaches a conclusion on Alice Huang.