A profile of Alice Huang, a suspected Chinese spy who founded Megaspeed in 2023 and spent years in Jensen Huang's orbit; Megaspeed's Nvidia imports top $4.6B (Mark Anderson/Bloomberg)

Nvidia's board has initiated an independent investigation following reports that CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. According to The Register Science, the investigation follows allegations of a romantic relationship between Huang and Alice Huang (also referred to as Huang Le), a Chinese citizen. The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating Ms. Huang on the grounds that she passes intelligence to Beijing.

The Register Science reports that Ms. Huang ran a Singapore-based company called Megaspeed, which has purchased significant amounts of Nvidia hardware. It is suspected that these chips were intended to be made available to Chinese users, either by running in datacenters or through facilitated transport to China. Economic Times Tech notes that Huang had previously lobbied President Donald Trump to loosen chip sales restrictions, successfully allowing the company to sell H200 chips.

The controversy involves whether Huang drove sales of advanced computer chips to China despite U.S. tech restrictions designed to limit China's access to such technology, according to The Hindu - Sci-Tech. In response to the allegations, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Guo Jiakun called the claims of a spy plot unsubstantiated and a smear campaign against Beijing, according to Economic Times Tech.

Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, The Hindu - Sci-Tech, Economic Times Tech, The Register Science — 4 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.