JENSEN HUANG ADMITS AFFAIR AS NVIDIA BOARD PROBES CHINESE SPY CLAIMS

Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation on Sunday into reports that founder and CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort, hours after Huang told employees in a company-wide memo that he had been unfaithful to his wife. A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, will run the inquiry, and Huang said he supports it and will cooperate fully.

The probe follows weeks of reporting that Alice Huang, a senior executive at the Singapore data-center company Megaspeed, was suspected by U.S. officials of feeding information to China and helping smuggle advanced Nvidia chips past American export controls. The Financial Times had reported that U.S. intelligence believed the two were romantically involved; Huang's memo did not name the other person in the affair.

The board said it has 'no reason to believe' that national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, and a spokesperson said Huang will keep leading the company 'without interruption.' The stakes run past one marriage: Nvidia is the world's second-largest company and the poster child of the AI boom, three House chairmen have already demanded Huang brief them behind closed doors on November 18, and the company reports earnings on November 17.