Jensen Huang's Nvidia exit detonates a China spy fight inside Trump's White House

Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang's three-decade run at the company he built is over. The board moved to push him out after The New York Times revealed Monday that he'd had a second affair, this one with a subordinate — coming just days after Huang admitted to an extramarital relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman U.S. officials suspect of being an asset of China's Ministry of State Security, according to the Independent. A trio of House committee chairs have already demanded Huang brief Congress on those ties.

Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio drafted a classified memo detailing how Alice Huang was allegedly recruited by China's spy agency, per the Times. The reported aim: send her to target Jensen Huang to learn more about Nvidia's products and nudge him into selling Beijing more of its cutting-edge AI chips. Rubio was alarmed enough to brief President Donald Trump on the memo aboard Air Force One on the way to China in May.

It didn't take. Trump ordered his Air Force One crew to hold at an Alaska air base so Huang could join him by private jet, per the report. Huang had already curried favor with a $25 million corporate donation to the White House ballroom project, and Trump and his allies loosened the Biden-era export controls that had restricted the top-end chips. Huang became a frequent White House visitor.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who administers the export control regime, reportedly refused to sanction Alice Huang's company, Megaspeed, despite U.S. intelligence concerns it was a front for Beijing's chip acquisition. Resurfaced audio from a January taping of the All In podcast has Lutnick calling Huang a "national treasure" he'd brought into Trump's inner circle. "I promised him in the beginning when I first met him that I would help him have really easy access to the president," Lutnick said, describing a deal in which Nvidia pays a 25 percent tariff importing chips to the U.S. for testing before export licenses go out.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed the finger Friday on CNBC, saying Treasury, War, the U.S. trade representative and State had pushed for months to put Megaspeed on the Entity List. "But Commerce has the pen," he said. "You will have to ask them about their internal process." Axios then leaked that Lutnick was among the officials who received Rubio's warning memo.

Lutnick testifies before Congress on the matter within days. His last Capitol Hill appearance, under questioning about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, was rocky. This time he has to explain why he didn't act on warnings that a company with suspected Chinese espionage links was buying from one of America's most important firms.