US tech giant Nvidia is opening an investigation into reports that chief executive Jensen Huang was the “target of a foreign intelligence effort”, the company’s board of directors has said.
The announcement came after Huang acknowledged to the board that he had been intimate with a Chinese business executive whom US intelligence determined was gathering information for Beijing, The New York Times reported.
Huang apologised in a message to the company, according to the Times.
“I was unfaithful to my wife,” he said.
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“My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”
Nvidia’s board said in a statement it has “no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised”, but that its inquiry would examine all available information.
Huang “fully supports the review and has committed to co-operating with it”, the board said.
Huang (63) will remain chief executive during the investigation.
The Times reported last month that US intelligence agencies had discovered that Huang had developed a close relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and chip buyer, and determined that she was feeding information directly to Beijing.
The two are not related, according to the Times.
Alice Huang was previously a television reporter in China before becoming a top executive at Singapore-based data centre company Megaspeed, which has become one of Nvidia’s biggest customers in southeast Asia.
Megaspeed bought more than $4.8 billion (€4.3 billion) worth of Nvidia chips over the past two years, according to the Times.
US president Donald Trump addressed the reports at his Halloween party, calling the situation “very complex” and saying he hoped everything was okay with Huang, who serves on the president’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.
The president has called Huang “smart” and “amazing”, insisting that Huang accompany him on foreign trips.
“I’ve always found Jensen Huang to be very above board,” Trump told reporters on October 31st, adding that the administration would look into the matter “very closely”.
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, has regularly surpassed Wall Street’s earnings expectations in the past three years since its high-end chips emerged as AI’s best building blocks.
The developments are likely to pressure the chipmaker’s stock, which has already seen sharp declines recently amid worries about AI sustainability and may also raise questions about Huang’s future at the helm of the company he co-founded. – AP/Reuters
