Nvidia's board spent its Sunday doing something no board of a $4.5 trillion company ever wants to do: opening an independent investigation into its own chief executive.
The board announced the probe after reporting that Jensen Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence operation, according to Reuters. A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, will oversee it. The board said it had "no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised," but that its inquiry "will examine all available information." Huang, the board said, fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it.
Hours before the announcement, Huang told employees himself. In a message to staff, he admitted he had been unfaithful to his wife: "My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry." He added, "My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility."
The story behind the probe broke in late October, when the New York Times reported that Huang had developed a close relationship with Alice Huang — no relation — a former executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company that buys Nvidia's AI chips. U.S. authorities, the Times reported, had concluded she was a Chinese intelligence asset, recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to gather intelligence on the CEO. Megaspeed has separately been scrutinized over suspicions it helped Beijing obtain advanced AI chips barred from shipment to China under U.S. export controls in place since 2022. In late October, Huang told Bloomberg the relationship and his interactions with her were "completely normal and not unusual."
That framing did not survive the weekend. Top Republican lawmakers in the House had already called on Huang to brief Congress by November 18, writing in a November 4 letter that the reporting raised "significant national security concerns regarding (China's) access to sensitive US technology and information." President Trump said Sunday he had not spoken to Huang about the allegations, calling him "a fine person," while the Times reported Trump was briefed on the intelligence findings roughly a year ago and chose not to act.
The timing could hardly be worse for Nvidia. Its shares have already given up all of this year's gains amid a broader tech rout driven by worries about the pace of AI spending — the same boom that made the company one of the world's most valuable. Analyst Dan Ives called it "a black eye moment for Jensen," warning of "multiple congressional inquiries at a minimum" and a real risk, depending on the investigation, that Huang could be removed. Josh Gilbert at eToro was blunter about the stakes: the probe "won't alter anything long-term unless it leads to a change at the top, at which point it becomes a completely different ball game."
Huang, who has led Nvidia for more than three decades and built it into the dominant supplier of AI chips, says he is committed to continuing to lead the company "without interruption" and to "protecting Nvidia and supporting America's national security."
Watch the November 18 briefing deadline. Congress wants to know what Huang knew, when he knew it, and what Nvidia's security procedures actually caught. The board's investigation will answer the same questions — and whether the world's most important chip company needs a new chief executive to keep answering them.
— via Reuters