Photo credit, AFP
One of the most prominent figures in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector has been accused of having an affair with a suspected Chinese spy, leading to the launch of an investigation.
US intelligence services believe that Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, who had close ties to Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang, was a spy for Beijing, according to a report in the New York Times.
On Sunday, Mr. Huang admitted to being “unfaithful” to his wife and apologized for harming her and his children.
US tech giant Nvidia, one of the world's most valuable companies, has launched an independent investigation following the disclosure.
The company said it did not believe U.S. national security had been threatened and added that Mr. Huang was committed to remaining at the helm of the company.
For his part, US President Donald Trump said the FBI was investigating the matter.
Trump said he spoke with Huang on Monday. “I asked her this question: 'Did you have any idea that she was a spy?' He said, 'I had absolutely no idea she was a spy,' and I truly believe that,” the president told reporters.
Here's what we know about this case and why it matters.
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Who is Alice Huang and what do we know about this love story?
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US officials believe Alice Huang was recruited to spy by China's main intelligence agency, the New York Times reported. Her current whereabouts are unknown.
Alice Huang, who is not related to Jensen Huang, held a senior management position at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company, between March and November 2023.
The company is suspected of helping to divert Nvidia chips to China, a concern that Nvidia said was investigated and dismissed.
The BBC has learned, however, that Megaspeed is under investigation by the Singapore government following earlier accusations that the company was circumventing US sanctions on the export of Nvidia's high-end chips.
The company told The New York Times last month that its current management team takes the allegations seriously and that it has retained outside legal counsel to conduct an internal investigation.
Surveillance work allegedly revealed communications between Alice Huang and a U.S. citizen, who was later identified as Jensen Huang through a process known as “unmasking.”
It is still unclear what information, if any, Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, collected and transmitted to Beijing.
She did not respond to the New York newspaper's request for comment.
When the BBC asked Nvidia if the company was aware of the intelligence concerns, it responded in the negative.
“We are confident that if we had faced a real threat, the US government would have informed us,” an Nvidia spokesperson told the BBC.
China rejects espionage accusations.
“We’ve already answered that. Accusations regarding Chinese spies are completely unfounded, speculative and aimed at defaming and discrediting China,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at his daily press conference on Monday.
In late October, the New York Times revealed that Donald Trump had been briefed last year on intelligence that Alice Huang was spying for China.
For his part, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio refused to make statements when asked about Alice Huang.
In the first half of this year, Mr. Rubio oversaw the drafting of a memo warning about ties between Alice Huang and the Chinese businesswoman, according to the New York Times.
Why is this important?
Photo credit, Reuters
Nvidia is at the heart of the U.S.-China AI race, which is why the billionaire's romance has sparked national security fears among U.S. lawmakers.
Trump said the fear is that if China gains the edge in AI, it will significantly strengthen the country's military and surveillance capabilities.
The U.S. lead is largely due to American companies like Nvidia, which work with manufacturers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces more than 90% of the world's most advanced chips.
Since 2022, the United States has implemented various export controls to prevent the shipment of advanced technologies to China, which it says helps preserve the United States' competitive advantage and protect its national security.
This meant that companies like Nvidia found themselves virtually shut out of the world's most lucrative market, and Huang went so far as to claim that Nvidia's market share in China had fallen from around 95% to virtually zero.
Huang engaged in diplomatic outreach between Washington and Beijing, hoping to find a way to re-enter the U.S.-sanctioned system of international relations and, at the same time, influence U.S. policy toward China.
Sunday's revelations could explain why Huang failed to land the jackpot for Nvidia: permission from the Trump administration to sell all but the most advanced of its chips to China.
Who is Jensen Huang?
Photo credit, Bloomberg via Getty Images
Huang was born in Taiwan in 1963 and was 9 years old when his family moved to the West Coast of the United States.
He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University and then a master's degree in the same discipline from Stanford University.
Huang then worked for American semiconductor manufacturer AMD, before co-founding Nvidia.
Nicknamed "Daddy Huang" in Taiwan and known at the time as the "Taylor Swift of technology", he is renowned for being a workaholic and perfectionist who places incredibly high demands on his staff.
His fortune is estimated at $155 billion, according to Bloomberg's billionaires ranking.
“Jensen Huang is a technology visionary like Steve Jobs,” Stephen Witt, author of “The Thinking Machine,” a biography of Huang, told the BBC, adding that he was responsible for the creation of AI hardware as we know it today.
Huang has a very close relationship with Trump.
At the recent White House AI Summit, attended by 42 tech executives, the president was joined by Elon Musk and Huang.
What is Nvidia and why is it important?
Photo credit, Getty Images
Founded in 1993 by Huang and fellow electrical engineers Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, the company was originally known for its graphics processing chips, particularly for video games.
Over time, it shifted its focus to AI, a field it now dominates.
Huang saved Nvidia from bankruptcy multiple times and took risks in AI well before the rest of the world, effectively building the infrastructure from the ground up.
“Today, when we think about it, we imagine these gigantic data centers; none of this existed. There were no customers for what he was building. In fact, its first customer was OpenAI,” Witt told the BBC.
All major tech companies that develop AI tools and infrastructure, including Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft, now use Nvidia chips.
With a current value of $4.5 trillion, Nvidia is one of the most valuable companies in history.
For now, the company's board appears reluctant to remove Huang from his position, and in a statement on Sunday said it has "confidence in Jensen and his management team."
Sources consulted by the BBC say his dismissal is unlikely due to the huge sums at stake.
There is no official succession plan for the 63-year-old.
He has repeatedly expressed his desire to stay in the job for decades, and Bloomberg reports that he has built an informal leadership structure around himself, different from a company's traditional hierarchy.
His children, Spencer and Madison, as well as his son-in-law, Nico Caprez, hold senior positions at Nvidia.
Who is Jensen Huang's wife?
Huang met his future wife, Lori Mills, at Oregon State University while studying electrical engineering in the early 1980s. They were lab mates.
They married in 1985, about eight years before he co-founded Nvidia, and have two children, Madison and Spencer.
In 2007, the couple established the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation.
This charitable foundation has seen its assets increase considerably in recent years, thanks to the dizzying rise in Nvidia's share price, and its market capitalization is estimated at more than 9 billion US dollars.
Among his donations are tens of millions of dollars for engineering programs at Oregon State University and Stanford University.
Witt told the BBC that Huang had tried very hard to present himself as a family man, adding: "That's very important to him." »
“He praises his wife, he speaks of her with great admiration,” he added.
“The consequences of such a case would be negative for any family. But for someone who has worked so hard to cultivate an image of a family man and who ensures that his children remain very united, this is really serious. »
Additional reporting by Tom McArthur in London, Ayeshea Perera and Tessa Wong in Singapore, and Helen Davidson in Sydney.
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