Nvidia CEO Had ‘Close’ Relationship with Chinese Spy, US Officials Believe

Nvidia, currently the world’s most valuable company, makes many of the chips which power AI datacenters, providing the technical groundwork which makes AI tools from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google possible. Amid what the US government describes as an AI race with China, Nvidia’s top boss is allegedly being personally targeted.

The Chinese government reportedly recruited a female executive to spy on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, to gain intelligence about the company’s most advanced chips, which are currently sanctioned from being sold to China. She reportedly had a “close” relationship with the CEO, according to US intelligence officials cited by The New York Times.

The woman, Alice Huang, was allegedly reporting directly to the main Chinese intelligence agency according to sources who spoke to the media outlet. Huang, no relation to the CEO, is a former executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center operator, which is a direct customer of Nvidia’s chips. She reportedly also had relationships with executives at manufacturing firm Gigabyte, which assembles some of Nvidia’s supercomputers, and could speak English well.

The Nvidia CEO is currently expected to attend a closed-door briefing with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the chairman of the Select Committee on China, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to address the national security concerns surrounding his relationship with the woman.

John Rizzo, an…