Senator Coons Says Congress Will Investigate Nvidia's Jensen Huang Over Alleged Spy Ties

"Congress will investigate and get answers," Coons wrote on X on Saturday, according to Axios, after linking to the latest New York Times reporting on the memo. In the same post he said: "The more I learn about the insane relationship between the Trump Administration, Chinese spies, and AI billionaires, the more I'm convinced there is nothing this administration does that isn't corrupt."

The statement means lawmakers from both parties are now pressing the head of the world's most valuable chipmaker over the affair. Nvidia's processors sit at the centre of the Trump administration's strategy for winning the AI race against China, and the company has spent much of the year lobbying over whether, and how, its chips can be sold into the Chinese market. Democrats take control of Congress in January, which would give them subpoena power to pursue the matter.

The Republican Request

Three House Republican committee chairmen had already moved. In a letter dated November 4, Brian Mast, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, John Moolenaar, who leads the Select Committee on China, and Intelligence Committee chairman Eric Crawford asked Jensen Huang for a closed-door briefing on November 18, according to Reuters reporting. They wanted to discuss the Times' reporting on Alice Huang and Nvidia's safeguards against foreign espionage.

The chairmen wrote that the reporting raised "significant national security concerns" about China's access to sensitive US technology and information, and that it was "vital that Congress determines the extent to which U.S. national security has been placed at risk." Axios reported that the lawmakers gave Huang until November 11 to set a date for the meeting.

How the Allegations Built

The scrutiny follows a run of reports over roughly ten days. On October 29 the New York Times reported that Jensen Huang and Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, which buys AI chips from Nvidia, had a close relationship, that US authorities were concerned about her ties to Chinese intelligence, and that President Trump had been briefed. Two days later the Wall Street Journal reported that intelligence agencies in the US, Singapore and Taiwan all had reason to suspect she was working for Beijing.

On November 6 the Times and the Financial Times reported on a US intelligence memo, circulated before Trump's trip to Beijing in May, which said Alice Huang had been recruited by the Ministry of State Security specifically to target Jensen Huang. According to those reports, her aim was to persuade him to lobby US officials to allow chip exports to China. The FT reported that the memo also said the two had a romantic relationship. The two are not related.

Nvidia has repeatedly denied that the relationship was anything other than an ordinary business contact. A spokesperson told the Times that the chief executive's interactions with Alice Huang were "not unusual" and that the company does not share classified information with customers. Nvidia has said Huang speaks with thousands of customer executives each year and that cloud customers in Asia receive only general business information. It did not respond to Axios's request for comment on Saturday. The Chinese government has denied using Alice Huang to spy on Jensen Huang.

The allegations arrive at a difficult moment for the company. Separate Times reporting this week found that Chinese firms licensed by the Commerce Department to handle Nvidia's H200 chips had empty offices and links to blacklisted companies, and Nvidia's shares have fallen for five straight weeks.

The next fixed point is the Republicans' November 11 deadline for Huang to schedule his briefing, ahead of the November 18 date the chairmen proposed.