President Donald Trump said on Monday that the FBI is looking into Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang’s relationship with a woman American intelligence officials suspect of working for China — and that he personally rang Huang to ask him about it.
Trump told reporters at a White House briefing that he had spoken to Huang earlier in the day. “I did speak to him today just to see if he’s feeling all right,” he said. “I asked him about that, and he said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.”
“I really believe him,” Trump added. “I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he’ll be in good shape.”
The remarks are the first time the president has confirmed that federal law enforcement is involved. Until now the affair and the espionage allegations around it had been handled as a corporate matter: on Sunday, Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation, and Huang admitted in an email to staff that he had been unfaithful to his wife. A federal counterintelligence inquiry is a different order of problem — for Huang personally, and for a company whose chips sit at the centre of the global artificial intelligence race.
Trump also revealed that he had known about the intelligence concerns for some time. The New York Times reported that he was briefed about the suspected operation as far back as October 2025. Asked on Monday when exactly he learned of it, Trump would not give a precise date. “Not too long ago,” he said. He added that he does not expect to raise the matter when he meets Chinese President Xi Jinping next week, though Xi may ask him about it.
China, for its part, rejected the whole premise on Monday. “The so-called Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated. It is nothing but smears against China,” foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said.
How the scandal reached the White House
The woman at the centre of the affair is Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based technology company and Nvidia customer. She is not related to Jensen Huang. American intelligence agencies have concluded, according to reporting in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, that she was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to gather information on Huang and to press him to lobby for looser American limits on advanced chip exports to China. No criminal charges have been brought against either of them, and none of the underlying intelligence assessments has been made public.
Nvidia’s board acted on Sunday, announcing an independent investigation “in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.” A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside lawyers, will run the inquiry. The board said it has no reason to believe American national security or Nvidia’s secrets were compromised, and that Huang will keep running the company. In his staff email the same day, Huang wrote: “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.”
The market has already delivered its verdict. Nvidia shares fell 4.3 percent on Monday to $178.67, wiping about $190 billion off the company’s value and taking the stock to a seven-month low. Within minutes of the closing bell, shareholders filed a proposed class action in a San Jose federal court accusing Nvidia and Huang of concealing the relationship and the risks it carried. Three Republican House committee chairs have summoned Huang to a closed-door briefing on November 18 and want his written answers by Wednesday, November 11. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Monday that lawmakers need more information from the administration about the reports.
Why this matters
Nvidia is not just another large company caught in a scandal. Its graphics processors power most of the world’s artificial intelligence systems, and Washington has spent years tightening controls on which of those chips can be sold to China. Huang has been one of the loudest voices arguing those controls go too far — and one of Trump’s closest allies in Silicon Valley, awarded the National Medal of Science by the president last month.
That is what makes Monday’s development so consequential. A board inquiry can be managed inside a company; an FBI investigation, confirmed on camera by the president, cannot. If the bureau finds that sensitive information reached Beijing, the questions will not stop at Huang’s personal conduct. They will reach into Nvidia’s export practices, into the advice Huang gave the White House on chip policy, and into the wider contest between Washington and Beijing over who controls the technology that defines this decade. Nvidia reports earnings on November 17. Huang is expected to face questions he has so far answered only in a staff email.
Related: Nvidia Opens Investigation Into Reports Its CEO Was Targeted by Chinese Spies — and Nvidia Lost $190 Billion in a Day. Now Shareholders Are Suing Its CEO.
Sources: Nvidia’s board announced the investigation in a statement published in its newsroom on November 8, and Huang addressed staff in a message published the same day. Trump’s remarks were reported by Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and CNN.
