The thing about the Jensen Huang affair is that it is just so clichéd. Embarrassing (especially for him, and for those of us who might rather look away). This story is old and worn but never, ever seems to leave the stage of human failings. The “honeypot” trap, men weakened by flattery or lust (or both), trading secrets and favours for sex. Men whose calculation of risk-reward crumbles under the basest of temptations.
But let me stay away from the sexual politics, because there be dragons. There is a much wider story here, and it is worth digging into what we know for sure and what we don’t know, and what we may never know. There has been so much written about this that a roundup of known vs unknown might be clarifying.
There are three separate scandals at play.
The first scandal is personal. We know who the women are – Alice Huang is his extramarital lover and Lori Huang is his wife of many years. He admitted to the affair in an announcement to staff on 8 November after a series of newspaper articles spilled the beans, starting with the NYT on 29 October (there were previous rumours, but the NYT piece provided credibility). If this were the only scandal, Huang might survive; plenty of other powerful CEOs have cheated, survived and thrived before. But it is very unlikely to be so.
There are a few things we don’t know about the personal scandal. When did they meet? When did it become steamy? What was happening in the marriage? I submit that none of these is important (at least to the personal scandal) and that they are none of our business beyond prurience. To probe into the private details of his marriage and infidelity seems like an unnecessary intrusion.
But there is one unknown about the personal affair which is important. US intelligence uncovered the romance via wiretapping. They had had Alice Huang under surveillance for over a year (a matter we will come to) and heard intimate conversations and more. Exactly what prompted the investigation and exactly what they heard will probably never be revealed, at least not publicly.
The second scandal is corporate.
The glue
Nvidia is the single most important company in AI in the world (in addition to being the biggest company until recently, when Apple grabbed top spot). If OpenAI goes away, no prob. Ditto Anthropic. But Nvidia is the glue that holds the entire AI enterprise together, providing the most advanced piece of silicon in the AI stack, the GPU. There are competitors – Intel, Broadcom, AMD, Huawei and a few others – but their stuff does not yet compare to Nvidia chips. And in a little-known but critical lapse in governance, there is no “second tier” of management at the company. Sixty people report to Jensen. There is no successor. Nvidia is a one-man show. The board is responsible for this failure, because if Jensen is out, the future of the company is unpredictable. Shareholder lawsuits will follow, and individual members of the board may be held liable.
The corporate scandal is related to a single question. Was Alice Huang’s Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed able to purchase a large quantity of advanced Nvidia chips to which she was not entitled, and if so, how?
Here is what we know for sure:
Megaspeed bought 240,000 top-of-the-line chips, supposedly to provide AI services to customers through its cloud. Nothing suspicious there. Except that in 2025, when she was raising money for her company, potential investors were told that they would “have no problem securing GPUs”, at a time when everyone else was having problems. She was already close to Jensen when she said that. Hmm.
These chips were (and still are) export-restricted technology, by US law. Buyers need to get a licence approved by the Trump administration. There is a very long list of companies that would sell their grandmothers to get hold of these chips, at any price, companies much bigger and better known than Megaspeed.
Violations
There is one other thing we do know. For the past two years Megaspeed has been investigated by multiple US and foreign agencies for import-export and related violations. There are no public findings from these investigations.
Which leads to a whole slew of unknowns. Take a deep breath:
- Did Jensen know Megaspeed had been under investigation by the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the Singapore Police Force and Malaysian authorities since 2024?
- Did he intercede on their behalf? If so, did he intercede directly with Trump to get them the coveted export licence?
- Did Trump know that Megaspeed had been under investigation?
- Did Megaspeed get to jump a very long queue, helped along by Jensen?
- How did they get the money to pay for all those chips?
- Finally, where are the GPUs?
This last matter is draped in mystery – according to multiple sources including Huang biographer Steven Witt, there is compelling evidence that the chips were never used at Megaspeed at all and were redirected either directly to China or to Malaysian companies under Chinese control. This sort of indirection is typical of other chip-smuggling operations.
This would make Alice Huang, if nothing else, a smuggler.
This brings us to the third scandal, the one that tips over from corporate malfeasance into national security. Is Alice Huang a Chinese spy and asset?
Jiggery-pokery
This is where we know the least. The investigations into import-export violations are largely out of public view except for the leaks that have been reported by the NYT. While it seems likely that there was plenty of jiggery-pokery going on at Megaspeed, it is also possible that Jensen Huang simply (and perhaps illegally) helped his lover to jump some pesky hurdles without really understanding the extent of the deceit.
But if China was the puppet-master behind it all, it becomes a whole new game. Smuggling is a commercial venture. Industrial espionage carried out by a superpower against a technology as important as this is something else entirely, particularly given the frosty and bitter distrust that exists between China and the US.
Again, what do we know for sure? We know the FBI is involved. We know that three GOP congressmen who oversee foreign affairs, Chinese strategic competition and intelligence operations have interviewed Jensen behind closed doors. We know China has protested the rumours already. On 10 November, the NYT (which seems to have a Deep Throat deep in intelligence) reported that Trump had been warned that this may be a spycraft operation not once, but twice, including by Secretary of State Marco Rubio while flying on Air Force One. It seems that Trump chose to do nothing (another gift to the Democrats come the next elections).
On Wednesday 11 November (yesterday, as I was writing this), the NYT carried a story about Alice Huang. No one seems to know where she is. Her social media accounts have been deleted. Her age, hometown, education and employment history remain surprisingly obscure for someone who controlled a multibillion-dollar technology business. The assets in her business grew from $33m in 2023 to $3bn in 2024 (yes, WTF?). And further leaks suggest that US intelligence has concluded that she is indeed a Chinese asset.
If this is all true, the commercial consequences will be unpredictable and volatile even if Jensen was partially blind to it. Nvidia is invested in, and entangled with, scores of huge US AI companies via equity or multi-year commercial contracts, and those deals could quickly unravel if Jensen is forced out. The domino effect across markets would be loud and nasty.
Unanswered questions
We may never know the answers to all of the unanswered questions. That is because the investigations are of such consequence that they are likely to be sealed from the public while backrooms hum with the sound of geopolitical damage control. But one can also imagine that even the investigators may never get all the answers, because what may have been whispered or promised in the warm and private afterglow of sex will remain exactly that – private.
A personal scandal, a corporate scandal and a national security scandal with one of the most admired and well-liked entrepreneurs in the world at the centre of it all, a triple whammy. What is to become of Jensen Huang?
It is my prediction that Jensen cannot survive this as CEO and may even face criminal sanction. Alice Huang will disappear from view, perhaps forever. It is also my prediction that Nvidia will eventually recover after a cathartic and expiatory shedding of market value for the company and its broader cohort; after all, it still owns crucial IP. US policy and oversight for high-tech exports will be tightened and Democrats will have a finger-pointing field day.
As for US–China relations? Perhaps it changes nothing. The status quo is already undisguised distrust and this will not move the needle.
[Image: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/bios/jensen-huang]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend