US Memo Says Nvidia's Jensen Huang Had Romantic Ties to Suspected Chinese Spy

The woman is Alice Huang, also known by her Chinese name Huang Le, an executive at Singapore-based data centre company Megaspeed. US intelligence believes she holds Chinese nationality. According to the reports, officials drew up the memo earlier this year from material gathered by intelligence agencies. They shared it with a small group of senior officials shortly before President Donald Trump travelled to Beijing in May for his summit with Xi Jinping.

The allegation adds a personal side to an episode that already touches export controls, Nvidia's China business and Huang's standing in Washington. Nvidia declined to comment on the relationship or the memo, according to South Korea's SBS, which summarised the FT report. The company has previously said Huang speaks with thousands of customer executives every year. None of the intelligence claims has been publicly confirmed, and the reports rest on anonymous sources.

According to the reports, the memo says Alice Huang was recruited to gather information on Jensen Huang. It also says Chinese intelligence sought information about American AI semiconductors and tried to influence Nvidia to supply advanced chips to China. The New York Times also reported on the memo. Earlier, the Times reported that US intelligence agencies had concluded Huang was the target of a Chinese spying operation.

Megaspeed is an Nvidia customer that became independent in 2023 after separating from a Chinese gaming company. It is under investigation over allegations that it helped smuggle advanced Nvidia chips into China in breach of US export restrictions. Bloomberg and others have reported that Megaspeed is one of several companies that may have tried to divert chips meant for data centres outside China. Nvidia carried out its own review and said it found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Huang defended his dealings with the company in a Bloomberg interview at the end of October, after the Times first reported that a Megaspeed executive was under US investigation. He called his interactions with Huang Le "completely normal and not unusual" and typical of his contact with Chinese customers. He said she no longer works at Megaspeed. On the chips, he said: "We've studied all their deployments of our GPUs and counted every one." He also said the US government had not told him of any suspicions about her. China's foreign ministry spokesman, Guo Jiakun, called the earlier Times report "unsubstantiated and purely a smear against China."

The political stakes for Nvidia are high. US export rules have largely cut the company off from China, which had been its largest chip market. Huang has spent much of the past two years lobbying the administration and has met Trump several times since January 2025. He was initially left off the business delegation's flight for the May trip to China. After Trump noticed, he called Huang, who joined the aircraft at a stopover in Alaska. Huang also attended the state dinner Trump hosted for Xi during the Chinese leader's US visit in September.

Senior Republican lawmakers have asked Huang to appear privately before the House committees on China, foreign affairs and intelligence. They want to question him about the Times reporting on Chinese efforts to target him, and the new memo allegations are likely to come up at that closed-door session.