aljazeera.com - US chipmaker nvidia investigates CEO jensen huang over affair

United States-based chipmaker Nvidia is investigating its chief executive officer, billionaire Jensen Huang, after he confirmed he had an intimate relationship with a woman accused of working for Chinese intelligence.

But on October 29, The New York Times said it had obtained exclusive information that a Chinese woman named Alice Huang, or Huang Le, sought to cultivate close ties with Jensen Huang in an effort to glean information about Nvidia’s technology and that Jensen may have been the target of a Chinese espionage plot.

The New York Times also reported that Alice Huang’s employer, Megaspeed, had become one of Nvidia’s largest buyers, purchasing some $4.8bn in equipment from the US firm.

Jensen Huang’s ties to Alice Huang, who is of no relation, spurred fierce bipartisan backlash in the US Congress in the aftermath of the report.
China and the US have been in competition to dominate key tech sectors like artificial intelligence (AI).

In an announcement on Sunday, Nvidia said the probe would be conducted by a “committee of independent directors” with outside counsel.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, has denied any allegations of spying in the case.

In August of that year, the Trump administration announced it would take a 15 percent cut of certain Nvidia chip sales to China.

Trump reportedly bought as much as $1.6m in Nvidia stock and sold about $1m in August, ahead of November’s midterm elections.

After the midterm races last Tuesday, stocks for AI-related companies, including Nvidia, tumbled in reaction to widespread Republican losses.

Trump has pushed back against calls to regulate AI companies, but many Democrats during the midterms campaigned on placing restrictions on the companies, including on the construction of data centres.

Nvidia lost $450bn in market value in a single trading day last week, but it rebounded on Friday, regaining 4 percent of its losses.

Jeff