Zoe Kleinman: Nvidia CEO's affair will cause ripples across US and beyond

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Jensen Huang, 63, has been called the ‘Taylor Swift of tech’ in the US

The tech world has spent the day digesting the extraordinary news that Jensen Huang – the charismatic, leather-jacket wearing chief executive of the multi-trillion dollar firm Nvidia – is being investigated by his own company over an extramarital affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy.

None of us had that on our bingo cards for 2026.

Huang’s alleged romantic affair with Alice Huang (no relation), the former CEO of a Singapore-based data centre company, has cast ripples far beyond his immediate family – undoubtedly on an emotional rollercoaster of their own – taking us to a crossroads at which technology, geopolitics and national security intersect.

In a nutshell, this is about the bitter rivalry between the US and China, as well as whether Jensen Huang has betrayed the US as well as his wife.

The US is locked in a fierce race with China to develop the best AI models.

“Whoever wins AI, wins,” as US President Donald Trump puts it. He thinks that the country with the more dominant AI technology will benefit the most from it and, ultimately, will be the most powerful in the world. He may well be right.

Nvidia happens to make the best chips in the business for AI – so much so that it has been overwhelmed with demand.

It sets its prices accordingly: a single unit of the firm’s latest kit for data centres starts at £37,000 ($50,000). A medium or large site might have hundreds of them.

The US administration initially slapped an export ban on Nvidia’s more recent devices to prevent China from taking advantage of their superior capabilities. It has since softened the rules a little.

But there are suggestions that Alice Huang’s company, Megaspeed, may have been involved in sneaking them into the country while she was in charge. Bloomberg reported that the firm bought billions of dollars worth of Nvidia tech in November 2025. Megaspeed denies that it was used illegitimately.

For his part, Jensen Huang has lobbied heavily for the export rules between the two countries to be relaxed, arguing against the weight of general opinion that the AI race doesn’t matter and that it would be no bad thing for China to become dependent on US tech.

“President Trump wants American to win and President Xi wants China to win, and it’s possible for both of them to do so,” he told the BBC last year.

It think it’s safe to assume that neither country sees it that way.

Nvidia shares tumble over investigation into Huang’s affair with alleged Chinese spy

Could this be the end of ‘Jensanity’

The difficult questions Nvidia now has to try to answer include whether Alice gained special access to the firm’s latest technology, either deliberately or not, via Jensen – and, if so, whether she shared it with Beijing or others.

We don’t know when their affair began or ended, but there are numerous photos and videos of Jensen and Alice together at events. It is feasible that there were moments when they spent quite a lot of time together and Jensen has talked about always having an eye on his work.

China denies that she was engaged in espionage.

Interest in economic espionage is neither new nor unique to China. But many Western countries say that China does it on a grand scale, using a combination of technology tools and agents embedded in various organisations – including private companies.

China having access to significant enough numbers of Nvidia’s chips to make use of them, or stripping them down and learning how to make its own versions, would infuriate the Trump administration, which is trying to keep its AI technology close to its chest.

Some models have even been withheld from the UK-based AI Safety Institute on the grounds that they are potentially too dangerous to be shared. The US does not want anyone having a headstart or misusing its innovations.

Another potential bombshell lies in the form of any national security information to which Jensen Huang may have been privy.

He is a man operating at the very top of the US elite – one of a handful of people who could probably walk into the White House unannounced and have tea with Trump. He has influence, he has access and he has powerful friends. It’s quite possible that secrets were shared with him.

Nvidia says there’s no evidence so far that he passed anything on and the firm has launched an internal investigation. Huang says he will co-operate and wants to keep his job – though if nothing else, he has broken Nvidia’s own code of conduct, which states that company members should not have relationships with clients.

At present, he has the backing of both the Nvidia board and Trump, who described him as “honourable” and speculated that there must have been a reason for what had transpired. In other words, he’s not throwing his tech boss buddy under the bus.

Nvidia’s share price has fallen but has not tanked spectacularly, suggesting shareholders are not abandoning the company under his stewardship in their droves either.

An AI industry with a weakened Nvidia would undoubtedly be a slower one.

And there isn’t really a natural successor waiting in the wings to replace Jensen were he forced out.

Huang has run Nvidia for more than 30 years – to many, he is Nvidia. He has steered it through multiple crises and it was his decision for the firm to focus on AI before it was trendy.

He is known to be a demanding boss who expects staff to work long hours and to high standards. There are stories about him calling all-staff meetings to tell off individuals who had made mistakes. He has said this was to prevent others making the same errors – but you can only imagine how it felt for those on the receiving end.

While he awaits the conclusion of the investigation into his actions, Huang must hope that, despite not tolerating the mistakes of his colleagues in the past, they will be gracious about his own failings.

And he must also live with the irony that he was potentially caught out not by a sophisticated high-tech sting, but by the oldest trick in the book: a honey trap.

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