Republican Senator Calls for Huang to Quit as Nvidia Loses $430 Billion in Two Sessions

Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, told Politico late on Tuesday that the stakes were too high for Huang to stay. "The potential for extortion is so tremendous that something as sensitive as Nvidia chips, I just think he's got to go," he said.

The call turns a scandal about Huang's personal conduct into a direct question about who runs the world's dominant supplier of AI chips. Huang co-founded Nvidia and has led it for more than three decades. He owns about 3.6 per cent of the company but does not hold majority voting control, and he runs an unusually flat organisation in which dozens of executives report to him directly, Reuters reported. Nvidia's results are due next week, and the stock has fallen 9.5 per cent since news of the relationship broke, after being roughly flat for the year before that.

Pressure also came from the other side of the aisle. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Congress needed a full accounting of President Donald Trump's defence of Huang and urged lawmakers to quickly approve new restrictions on chip exports to China. "He's supposed to protect America, not China, not his friends," Schumer said of Trump.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter, that Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed Trump aboard Air Force One on the way to China in May about US intelligence indicating that Huang was involved with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy. The Times said it was at least the second time in seven months that Trump had been told about the intelligence. Trump has said he did not know of the alleged ties when Huang travelled with him to China in May, and that Huang told him he had "absolutely no idea" the woman was a spy. A White House official disputed the Times report and pointed to Trump's earlier comments.

The woman, Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, built a network of companies in China and Singapore with her husband and sister to acquire Nvidia chips, according to reporting by The Information. When orders for export-restricted chips stalled, she used her ties to Nvidia to secure supplies, helping move about 240,000 H100, H200 and some A100 chips into China, some of which ended up serving Alibaba, Tencent and smaller Chinese AI labs, the publication reported. Separate allegations that emerged on Tuesday hold that the relationship aided at least $7.5 billion in Nvidia chip shipments to China. Reuters said it could not verify these reports or locate Alice Huang for comment.

She became the controlling shareholder of Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed International, which was linked to Century Litong, a Chinese company that won preferred cloud partner status with Nvidia in 2023. The Financial Times reported that several US agencies had pushed for Megaspeed to be added to the Commerce Department's entity list, but that the department has delayed doing so. Megaspeed has denied smuggling chips.

Huang has told employees he was unfaithful to his wife but has given no details. The FBI is separately examining whether he was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation, and China's foreign ministry has called the spy accusations "groundless". Nvidia has said its board has no reason to believe US national security or company secrets were compromised. Its independent directors have hired Joon Kim, a Wachtell Lipton partner and former acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to lead an internal review, and Huang has committed to cooperating.

Huang apologised to senior executives at a closed-door meeting on Monday and was back holding meetings at Nvidia's headquarters on Tuesday, CNBC reported. House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Brian Mast has given him until Wednesday to agree to a closed-door briefing or face a subpoena.