Suspected Chinese spy cultivated Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, US intelligence shelved findings rather than shake AI market
Washington weighs chip sanctions against Beijing while protecting the stock price of its target
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Jensen Huang gives a keynote address at the Nvidia Berlin GPU technology conference on 21 October 2026 in Berlin, Germany. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
theguardian.com
A suspected Chinese intelligence operative under American surveillance for allegedly smuggling Nvidia chips to Beijing cultivated a close relationship with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, and US officials shelved the matter rather than unsettle the company at the centre of the AI boom, according to a New York Times report citing unnamed sources.
The suspected operative, Alice Huang — also referred to as Huang Le, and of no relation to the Nvidia CEO — is an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based datacenter company. American intelligence agencies concluded she was acting as a Chinese intelligence asset passing commercial information to Beijing, and had earlier been suspected of helping circumvent US export restrictions on advanced AI chips. Officials monitored her communications and concluded she had developed a close relationship with Jensen Huang.
What alarmed the White House was not the espionage itself but the access. Jensen Huang has built a close partnership with Donald Trump as Washington works to defend its lead in AI development, and the same administration that restricts chip exports to China on national security grounds sat on intelligence that a suspected Chinese asset had the ear of the most important man in the industry. Nvidia, for its part, sees nothing amiss. A spokesperson told the Times the CEO meets thousands of customer executives every year and that companies like Megaspeed receive ordinary business information — not trade secrets, and nothing relevant to national security.
The export controls the administration invokes as matters of national security are worth trillions in market capitalisation to the very company whose chief executive was left unbriefed and unbothered. Jensen Huang delivered a keynote at Nvidia's GPU technology conference in Berlin on 21 October.