{"id":10268,"date":"2026-11-10T00:19:29","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T00:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=10268"},"modified":"2026-11-10T00:19:29","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T00:19:29","slug":"what-could-china-get-from-jensen-huang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=10268","title":{"rendered":"What could China get from Jensen Huang?"},"content":{"rendered":"


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It\u2019s difficult to overstate Nvidia\u2019s power in today\u2019s AI landscape. The company\u2019s chips are the bedrock upon which advanced AI technology in the US is being built, and demand has consistently outpaced supply for years. Nvidia has also been an influential investor in a wide range of up-and-coming AI companies in recent years, with about $99 billion worth of equity investments in frontier AI labs, neoclouds, infrastructure companies, and more. Its chief executive has even become close with President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is why, as both cofounder and longtime CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang would be a valuable target for a foreign adversary with sights on the American AI industry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Huang is in hot water after news broke of his extramarital affair with an alleged Chinese spy, Alice Huang (no relation to Jensen) is an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud provider and a top Nvidia customer. Questions are swirling around how the affair may have influenced Huang\u2019s reported push to sell advanced chips to China \u2014 and potentially even influenced President Trump\u2019s own decisions surrounding AI export controls.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jensen Huang would be a valuable target for a foreign adversary with sights on the American AI industry<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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US officials believe the Megaspeed executive is a foreign intelligence asset that has funneled information straight to the Chinese government, per The New York Times<\/em><\/a> \u2014 in particular, officials reportedly believe that Megaspeed is related to a convoluted web of Chinese companies working together to access chips in bulk and perhaps even illegally get some of those chips into China. Alibaba is reportedly one of Megaspeed\u2019s top customers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not entirely surprising that the CEO of arguably one of the most important, if not the most important, AI chip companies is the target of some sort of intelligence-gathering from countries like China,\u201d Hanna Dohmen, a senior research analyst at CSET, said in an interview with The Verge<\/em>, adding that an alleged spy would potentially be interested in \u201cbetter understanding what the US government is thinking on export controls,\u201d as well as gathering information on Huang\u2019s conversations with the Trump administration, attempting to influence policy, and gathering information on trade secrets like \u201cwho\u2019s buying Nvidia\u2019s chips, who\u2019s getting them first, what\u2019s coming next in terms of AI chips.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Megaspeed\u2019s sister company, headquartered in Malaysia, spent $4.8 billion or more on Nvidia chips and technology between June 2024 and February 2026, the Times<\/em> reported, citing trade records from trade platform ImportGenius. The transaction sizes were outside the norm for a small company, particularly when Nvidia chips are so difficult to get.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201dMeetings with customers are part of a CEO\u2019s job\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nvidia spokespeople had said Huang\u2019s relationship with the Megaspeed executive was strictly business. Their interactions were described as \u201cnot unusual or unexpected\u201d in statements<\/a> to the press. Nvidia\u2019s line was, \u201cMeetings with customers are part of a CEO\u2019s job.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But at some point, their relationship became personal. In June 2024, just before Megaspeed became an Nvidia customer, photos show the two with other AI executives at a bar in Taipei after a local trade show; the following year, they reportedly<\/a> had a business dinner in Taipei with others as well. But in private, according to US officials cited by the Times<\/em>, the two\u2019s relationship raised alarm bells for the US government \u2014 they had reportedly been surveilling the Megaspeed executive for months, if not longer, and that\u2019s how it came out that she was in close contact with Huang.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The revelation is particularly concerning because of Huang\u2019s lobbying role. He\u2019d been trying to convince the Trump administration and Congress to loosen export controls for sending advanced semiconductors to China, ostensibly so that Nvidia could sell more chips. We now know this was happening around the same time that Huang was spotted<\/a> at the Taiwan dinner with Alice Huang in May 2025, according to Culper Research<\/a>, which shorted Nvidia\u2019s stock earlier this year. That dinner occurred shortly after Nvidia had shared the Trump administration\u2019s new restrictions<\/a> on its China-specific H20 chips in April.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Just a couple months after the Taiwan dinner, Huang reportedly met with Trump in the Oval Office<\/a> in July 2025 to plead his case for loosening export restrictions on Nvidia\u2019s advanced semiconductors. Days later, the company announced that the administration had blessed sales of its H20 chips<\/a> to China. Huang had argued that spreading American chips to China would help establish US technology as the standard, rather than allowing for Chinese chips to grow, according to The New York Times<\/em><\/a>. After setbacks earlier in the second Trump term in export policy to China, Huang began speaking with then-White House AI czar David Sacks in 2025, who became the key advocate for Nvidia\u2019s view that selling American chips to China would be beneficial, the Times<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By October 2025, Huang was lobbying Trump to allow Nvidia to sell more advanced chips to China, ahead of Trump\u2019s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, per the Times<\/em>; but after Trump considered the proposal<\/a>, he ultimately decided not to move forward. (That same month, Huang hired an external PR firm known for handling sex scandals, Wired<\/em><\/a> reported.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Months later, in December 2025, Trump changed course slightly, allowing Nvidia to sell H20 chips to a greenlit list of \u201capproved customers\u201d in China, with the US government taking a 25 percent cut of those sales. The same rules would apply to other US chipmakers, he wrote<\/a> on Truth Social at the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt is in Nvidia\u2019s interest and in Jensen Huang\u2019s interest to lobby for looser export control restrictions\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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CSET\u2019s Dohmen said that during the past two years, the US has seen a light loosening of AI export control regulations under the Trump administration, driven partly by Huang\u2019s own lobbying. But it\u2019s important to note, she said, that \u201ceven without any kind of intelligence operations from the Chinese side, it is in Nvidia\u2019s interest and in Jensen Huang\u2019s interest to lobby for looser export control restrictions.\u201d Any restrictions by definition stifle Nvidia\u2019s business expansion and cut off potential sales to help it grow its already stunning market cap \u2014 which is currently about $4.25 trillion, second only to Apple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Huang\u2019s relationship with Trump is also particularly relevant here. The president lavished praise on Huang<\/a> during a speech last year, saying that until recently, he hadn\u2019t even heard of Nvidia, and then he wanted to break it up. But after meeting Huang, he said, he understood why it would be difficult to re-create the company he\u2019d built. More recently, Huang put Trump on speakerphone<\/a> when the president called him during an appearance onstage at the All-In Summit, publicly displaying his close access to the Oval Office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This past spring, a classified memo \u2014 the writing of which was overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, per the Times<\/em><\/a> \u2014 circulated among Trump administration officials ahead of the president\u2019s trip to China in May, warning of the Megaspeed executive\u2019s alleged involvement in surveillance on behalf of China\u2019s Ministry of State Security. Her reported goal was to learn about advanced AI chips in the US and try to influence them being made available to China on a large scale. Asked if he had known about the memo reviewed by Rubio at a press briefing on Monday, Trump said, \u201cI\u2019d certainly check with the intelligence people. It could have been mentioned. Certainly it didn\u2019t make much of an impact on me.\u201d Earlier in the briefing, he said he was unaware of the alleged spy connection ahead of his trip to China.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Huang was initially left off the list of executives joining Trump on the trip, but the president later asked him to join<\/a>. Trump had been briefed about a year ago that US intelligence believed the Megaspeed executive to be a China intelligence operative, according to the Times<\/em>, and that she had a close relationship with a US citizen who turned out to be Nvidia\u2019s CEO. At the time, he reportedly chose not to take action.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So far, the allegations haven\u2019t affected Huang\u2019s future at Nvidia. He\u2019ll continue to lead the company during the investigation. Trump has also stood by him since news broke of the affair, telling reporters<\/a> this past weekend, \u201cI think he\u2019s an honorable guy. I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nvidia said it had \u201cno reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On Sunday, Huang wrote an internal memo to Nvidia employees \u2014 some of which are his own family members \u2014 writing, \u201cI owe my family and all of you an apology. I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.\u201d He then addressed Nvidia\u2019s board, partners, and shareholders, adding that he is \u201cfully committed\u201d to leading the company and \u201cwill work to earn back your confidence.\u201d This weekend, Nvidia\u2019s board of directors launched an independent investigation into the national security allegations. Huang will not have control over the participants in the investigation, and Nvidia said it had \u201cno reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Morningstar senior equity analyst Brian Colello wrote in a note on Monday that Morningstar \u201ccan\u2019t rule out the investigation fading away and Nvidia returning to business as usual,\u201d particularly since Huang is the \u201conly CEO the company has ever known.\u201d There\u2019s also the fact that Huang\u2019s Nvidia struck deals in August with six large financial institutions to provide more than $500 billion in financing for the buildout of AI data centers and other infrastructure, and as the US-China AI race intensifies, those are high-stakes agreements.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s unclear to us what these partnerships and financing deals would look like with a different Nvidia CEO,\u201d Colello wrote. \u201cCosts of capital may rise for future investments if perhaps the most prominent CEO in the AI landscape is no longer orchestrating such deals.\u201d Morningstar still maintained a very high uncertainty rating for the company, with Colello writing that it\u2019s possible US approval of Nvidia to sell H20 chips to China will be revoked and that the company could ostensibly be sanctioned as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Trump told reporters<\/a> on Sunday that Huang should remain CEO of Nvidia and that he would \u201ccertainly take him\u201d on his next trip to China. \u201cI haven\u2019t heard he\u2019s done anything wrong,\u201d Trump told reporters. \u201cHe dealt with somebody, but you know, so does everybody else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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