Jensen Huang admits affair with woman suspected of spying for China

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told employees Sunday that he had an extramarital affair, after reports surfaced that he had a relationship with a woman U.S. authorities suspected of spying for China. Nvidia's board says it has no reason to believe company secrets or national security were compromised. China has denied the allegations.

According to The New York Times, U.S. authorities suspected China's Ministry of State Security recruited Alice Huang to seek information about Jensen Huang and to influence how he felt about selling AI chips to Chinese firms. AFP and Reuters photos showed the two together in 2024 and 2025. Employees reported seeing Jensen Huang at Megaspeed's offices, where Alice Huang worked as an executive, according to short-seller Culper Research, which published a report on Nvidia's China business in May 2026. One employee told Culper the pair had a 'very close' relationship.

Three Republican House committee chairs have now requested a briefing with Huang about the relationship and about Nvidia's safeguards against foreign threats.

The Nvidia story echoes older cases where romance and intelligence work collided. A 2006 DOJ report found that counterintelligence agent James J. Smith carried on a secret 18-year affair with Katrina Leung, an FBI informant suspected of passing information to China. The investigation concluded Leung had handed classified U.S. government information to China without FBI authorization, exposing major gaps in how the bureau oversaw its informants, and a DOJ inspector general probe found she also had an affair with another FBI agent, William Cleveland. Both were arrested in 2003 and ultimately pleaded guilty to making false statements rather than espionage charges.

Russian activist-turned-politician Maria Butina pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Russian government after becoming romantically involved with Republican operative Paul Erickson. Federal prosecutors withdrew the allegation that she traded sex for political access, saying they had misinterpreted the evidence, per ABC News, but maintained she used the relationship to conceal activity meant to advance Russian interests.

Separately, FBI records declassified in August 2026 show former Congressman Eric Swalwell acknowledged having sexual encounters with a suspected Chinese operative, Christine Fang, according to the Washington Post. The records say Swalwell described the interactions as casual and said they never formally dated, and the FBI never accused him of wrongdoing over the relationship. Axios reported in 2020 that Fang had targeted California politicians including Swalwell, joining his fundraising efforts and helping place an intern in his office; intelligence officials told Axios she built access to political power through fundraising, networking, charisma and romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors. In 2014, defense contractor Benjamin Pierce Bishop pleaded guilty to disclosing classified information to a Chinese woman he was romantically involved with, and was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.