Jensen Huang Misled Nvidia Leaders About Alice Huang Affair, Reuters Reports

Former Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang misled several of the company's senior leaders, including its general counsel and its chief marketing officer, about the nature of his relationship with Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, according to a Reuters exclusive published on November 14. The report, based on internal correspondence reviewed by the news agency and on two people familiar with the matter, is the latest disclosure in the scandal that ended Huang's tenure at the chipmaker he built into the world's most valuable company.

Huang resigned as Nvidia's chief executive on Thursday, November 12, and apologised in a statement on Sunday, November 8, for being unfaithful to his wife and for disappointing the company. That statement did not name Alice Huang, a former top executive of Megaspeed International, an Nvidia customer that the United States was investigating over suspicions it could be spying for China. The two share a last name but are not related.

What the correspondence shows

Reuters reviewed several exchanges from October on the condition that it would not quote verbatim from the messages, and it is the first news organisation to report on the correspondence. In two separate messages in October, Huang told Nvidia leaders, including general counsel Tim Teter and chief marketing officer Alison Wagonfeld, that his interactions with Alice Huang reflected standard business dealings with customers. In other messages, he affirmed the routine nature of his dealings with Megaspeed.

That was not the first time Huang had reassured colleagues. During the autumn of 2025 and again in October 2026, as press inquiries drew Nvidia leaders' attention to his relationship with Megaspeed and Alice Huang, Huang described the interactions as appropriate at both times, the people familiar with the matter said. Reuters reviewed messages only from the October exchanges, not the ones from 2025.

Neither Teter nor Wagonfeld responded in a way that sheds light on what they believed at the time. Teter did not respond to a request for comment, and Wagonfeld did not immediately respond. A representative for Huang and an Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment, and a phone call and an email to contact information listed on a business card for Alice Huang went unanswered.

The threatened lawsuit against the New York Times

The correspondence also shows Huang discussing legal action against the New York Times after the newspaper published an article in October last year that drew attention to his meetings in public with Alice Huang. That article had prompted Huang to communicate with some Nvidia leaders in 2025 about his interactions with her, which he did not describe as an affair, the people said. In the end, neither Nvidia nor Huang filed a lawsuit, and a spokesperson for the Times said the paper received no legal demand.

It is unclear when the relationship became intimate. Photographs posted online and verified by Reuters show Huang and Alice Huang together in the United States, China and elsewhere, dating as far back as December 2023.

The board's investigation and the spying question

On November 10, the independent members of Nvidia's board said they had hired the Wall Street law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct an independent investigation, after the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported on Huang's relations with Alice Huang and on US authorities' suspicions that she was spying for China. Beijing has denied that she is a spy, and Reuters has said it has not independently verified whether Alice Huang was working on behalf of the Chinese government.

The affair was first reported by the Financial Times on November 6. The New York Times reported on November 10 that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had briefed President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One en route to China in May about US intelligence indicating Huang was involved with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy, and that in the spring of 2026 Rubio had overseen the drafting of a classified memo detailing intelligence indicating China's Ministry of State Security had recruited Huang to target Nvidia's chief executive. US Attorney General Todd Blanche said on November 12 that the Department of Justice had not yet reached a conclusion as to whether Alice Huang was a spy.

Huang told Bloomberg in an interview published on October 29 that the US government had not informed him about its suspicions regarding Alice Huang. Alice Huang became the controlling shareholder of Singapore-based Megaspeed in March 2023, according to the Washington-based research group C4ADS, which reviewed corporate records.

More relationships reported, shares down sharply

The Reuters exclusive also notes that the New York Times reported earlier this week that Huang had an extramarital relationship with an Nvidia employee, and that Reuters reported on Thursday that Huang had another intimate relationship with a different Nvidia employee.

The fallout has been severe for the company and its shareholders. Nvidia's stock has fallen more than 30% since its October 6 closing high, erasing more than $1.8 trillion from its market capitalisation, as investors weigh the leadership vacuum and the continuing investigations. Colette Kress, the company's chief financial officer, is serving as interim chief executive, and she has told staff the company is going through an extraordinarily difficult period, with an all-hands meeting scheduled for November 18.

The affair and its consequences also reach beyond Nvidia's boardroom. US authorities are examining how export-banned Nvidia chips reached China, including through facilities linked to Alice Huang — banned H800, H100 and H200 chips were found at a Shanghai AI facility — and the Justice Department is probing whether she helped smuggle Super Micro products into China. What the Wachtell investigation finds, and whether US authorities conclude anything about the spying suspicions, will shape how much of this scandal was a personal failing and how much of it was a security failure.

Sources

• Reuters — "Ex-Nvidia CEO misled top lawyer on affair with Chinese businesswoman, sources say" (November 14, 2026)
• Reuters — "What we know about Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang" (November 14, 2026)