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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with alleged Chinese spy: a timeline
Nvidia co-founder CEO Jensen Huang has never been as flashy or controversy-prone as AI leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman or SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk. Now, the 63-year-old industry kingpin has admitted that he cheated on his wife of 40 years in an affair that could have ramifications beyond Huang’s personal life and potentially impact national security.
United States officials believe that Huang’s likely romantic interest, Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, is a Chinese spy who has been feeding information back to Beijing. (Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen, is of no relation to Jensen Huang.)
Megaspeed, a Singapore-based AI infrastructure company, had reportedly purchased $4.8 billion in Nvidia chips over the last two years. The U.S. and Singapore have both previously investigated Megaspeed over suspicions that the firm was illegally sharing chips with China.
The U.S. and China are embroiled in a fierce technological arms race to build the most advanced AI infrastructure, which could shape each country’s economic future, military prowess, and capacity for innovation. Nvidia is valuable in this competition as one of the world’s largest makers of AI chips, which are essential for accelerating AI development. But as an American company, Nvidia faces government restrictions on the sale of its most powerful chips to Chinese entities.
As the controversy unfolds, we are organizing the most relevant events into a reverse-chronological timeline to keep you up to date.
The Nvidia CEO pulled out of upcoming speaking engagements at the ElevenLabs Summit and Anthropic CEO Forum.
Alice Huang and her family reportedly built a network of companies in China and Singapore to acquire Nvidia chips, including founding a Chinese company called Shanghai Century Litong. Founded in 2023, it became a Nvidia preferred cloud partner giving it priority access to chips, the Information reported. The Info reported that Shanghai Century Litong. facilitated buying $7.5 billion worth of Nvidia’s chips, including banned chips.
Nvidia’s head lawyer, Tim Teter, intervened in a 2025 US government probe surrounding the suspected smuggling of AI chips by Megaspeed International, Bloomberg reported. Teter contacted Commerce Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler asking questions about whether the Trump administration played a role in detaining Alice Huang.
In early 2025, Alice Huang and a business partner sought China-based investors for an Asian data center, promising they had no problem in securing GPUs, the Financial Times reported.
On Sunday night, President Trump weighed in on Huang’s controversy and showed support for the Nvidia CEO.