Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang faces Congress questions over alleged ties to Chinese spy

US intelligence officials claim that a woman who became close to Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang was working for a Chinese intelligence agency. American officials also believe Huang had a romantic relationship with the woman. US lawmakers are now keen to investigate the matter.

A report published on Friday, carried by NDTV, said a Chinese intelligence agency had recruited the woman to gather information from Jensen Huang.

Citing several sources who did not want to be named, the report said the woman, Alice Huang, is an executive at Megaspeed International, a technology company in Asia. US intelligence officials had kept her under surveillance, and Trump administration officials were later informed through an intelligence memo.

The New York Times reported that Alice Huang was working for Beijing's Ministry of State Security. The Chinese intelligence agency was trying to gather more information about US artificial intelligence chips. It may also have tried to persuade Nvidia to sell its most advanced semiconductors in the Chinese market.

It is not clear, however, when or how Jensen Huang met Alice Huang.

A Financial Times report published on Friday evening said US officials believe Jensen Huang and Alice Huang were in a romantic relationship.

The issue has gained fresh importance after the US midterm elections. The Democrats are set to take control of Congress as a result of the election. Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, are also raising questions about Jensen Huang's contact with the alleged Chinese spy.

On Thursday, the House Select Committee on China said in a statement that it had written to Jensen Huang inviting him to take part in a joint closed-door meeting. The statement said the letter raised lawmakers' concerns about Huang's contact with Megaspeed executive Alice Huang and about Nvidia's safeguards to protect its information from foreign adversaries' intelligence operations.

Megaspeed is a member of Nvidia's Cloud Partner Network. The Singapore-based company buys technical equipment from Nvidia and rents computing capacity to firms working on AI technology.

After the New York Times report was published, Nvidia said in a statement that its cloud partners do not ask for changes to US law or lobby in favour of selling products in China. The company added that anyone trying to gather confidential information through its cloud partners would have had no chance of success, because Nvidia does not exchange confidential information with customers and does not hold such information with them.

When the Financial Times asked about Jensen Huang's possible romantic relationship with Alice, Nvidia referred to its earlier statement. Jensen Huang had earlier said his relationship with Alice Huang was an ordinary business relationship.

On Friday evening, the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence were contacted for comment, but there was no immediate response.

In an interview last week, Jensen Huang defended Nvidia's business relationship with Megaspeed, describing it as 'normal and nothing unusual'. He also said Megaspeed's operations had been checked to ensure it could not illegally send Nvidia's AI processors to China.