President Trump defended Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as an “honorable guy” after his multi-trillion-dollar AI company began investigating his relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.
Huang’s mistress, Alice Huang — no relation — was allegedly recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), according to a months-old secret memo from the State Department. However, Huang has remained an influential figure in the president’s orbit influencing US AI policy.
“He’s done an amazing job for our country,” the president told reporters Sunday night, calling the billionaire tech boss an “honorable guy” and a “fine person.”
“I haven’t heard that he’s done anything wrong,” Trump added. “He dealt with somebody but, you know, so does everybody else.”
Nvidia, a $4.5 trillion company which produces the world’s most cutting-edge AI chips, opened an investigation into Jensen’s relationship with the suspected spy after he admitted to cheating on his wife Lori, whom he married in 1985. The couple have two children.
Alice Haung is an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company that purchased billions in AI chips from Nvidia.
It’s not clear how long the tryst lasted, but the two were photographed together at a Taipei bar in 2024.
The memo on Alice, which was overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was reportedly based on electronic surveillance of her, according to the New York Times.
Despite the Trump administration knowing about the alleged honeypot operation, Jensen remained a key figure in swaying the White House’s policy on AI.
The Biden administration had limited the sales of high-end Nvidia chips to China amid the AI race, but the Nvidia CEO pushed the Trump administration to ease up on those constraints, arguing against tight regulations on exports.
Nvidia’s board announced Sunday it launched a probe into whether Jensen was a “target of a foreign intelligence effort.”
However, the company stressed it still has “confidence in Jensen and his leadership team.”
“While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board’s inquiry will examine all available information,” it said of the probe, which will be conducted by independent counsel and directors.
Megaspeed, meanwhile, is under investigation by US and Singaporean authorities over accusations that it helped smuggle advanced Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) into China to circumvent US export restrictions on cutting-edge technology.