Trump Stood by Jensen Huang as Their Close Alliance Faces Its Biggest Test

President Donald Trump's close relationship with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang came under renewed scrutiny this week, after the company said its board was investigating whether the tech executive had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. It is a relationship that has delivered Huang a direct line to the president, a seat on Air Force One and a string of policy wins — and it is now being tested by the biggest crisis of his career.

Huang is one of Trump's closest allies in Silicon Valley, and the relationship between the two dates to at least 2025. Over the past two years, he has repeatedly voiced support for the administration's agenda and become a regular presence in Washington as Nvidia sought to sell advanced chips to the Chinese market.

A friendship built at Mar-a-Lago

The two men first met for dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida estate, in early 2025. Huang had skipped the inauguration, which many tech executives attended, then flew to Mar-a-Lago for a donor dinner and impressed Trump with his personal story as a Taiwanese immigrant who co-founded what had become the world's most valuable company. Trump latched onto Huang as a tech titan positioned to deliver on his promises of an economic renaissance.

Since then, Huang has become a fixture in Washington. He has made frequent White House visits, received state dinner invitations and even hitched a ride on Air Force One to China. He flew with Trump to China in May, the first visit by a US president to China in nearly a decade, and attended a high-profile state dinner in September for Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House. Just last month, Trump awarded Huang a National Medal of Science, calling him "a man whose determination laid the foundations for the explosion of super intelligence and put America at the front of the race, an amazing man, gotten to know him so well."

The two men speak regularly by phone. A Reuters reporter saw Huang's full name pop up on Trump's phone in December 2025, and Trump has called and interrupted Huang during an appearance at a recent tech conference and during one of Nvidia's companywide meetings. "From the moment that I met him, the only thing that he's ever talked to me about is creating more jobs, re-industrialising the United States, and protecting national security," Huang told the Associated Press in an interview this summer.

Policy wins that followed

Huang's relationship with Trump has coincided with several favourable policy developments for Nvidia. In April 2025, the administration backed off plans to restrict exports of certain Nvidia AI chips to China after Huang attended a dinner at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club. In December 2025, Trump said the United States would allow Nvidia to export its H200 processors, its second-best AI chips, to China and collect a 25 percent fee on such sales.

Huang has also played an outsized role in shaping Trump's policy on AI. In 2025, he persuaded the administration to reverse restrictions on chip sales to China, and in 2026 he helped derail a plan to create a regulatory process to evaluate AI systems and ensure they are safe, according to two people familiar with his involvement.

Nvidia has backed the relationship with money as well as access. Huang attended a $1 million-a-head fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago while Nvidia contributed another $1 million to the president's inauguration fund, and the company pledged $25 million toward the White House ballroom project. It also vowed to spend hundreds of billions to build out AI infrastructure in the United States, buoying Trump's efforts to bring manufacturing back home.

What Trump knew, and when

Huang's affair and Trump's ties to the Nvidia chief are now raising fresh questions about how much the president knew about the matter, when he knew it, and whether any sensitive intelligence was exposed. The New York Times reported that Trump was briefed on Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, the Chinese businesswoman US intelligence officials believe was passing information to Beijing, and chose not to act on the information.

The newspaper also reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio reminded Trump of Huang's relationship with the alleged spy when he brought the Nvidia chief to China on Air Force One for the state visit in May. It was at least the second time in seven months that Trump had been told of the matter.

When asked about the affair this week, Trump said he had spoken to Huang as the scandal grew. "I think he'll be in good shape," the president said, adding that Huang had assured him "he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy." "I just know Jensen very well," Trump said. "I just think he's a very honorable man." The comments amounted to a full-throated defence of a tech titan who has spent the past two years forging a close alliance with the president.

The stakes for both men

The episode, which Trump said has triggered an FBI probe as well as separate calls for congressional investigations, has not appeared to shake the president's confidence in Huang. But the scrutiny is spreading: Nvidia's board met on Wednesday to discuss Huang's future, House Republicans have given him a deadline to agree to testify, and the Justice Department is investigating Megaspeed, the Singapore cloud company at the centre of the affair.

For Trump, the question is whether standing by Huang becomes a political liability as the investigations deepen. For Huang, the question is whether the alliance that brought him so much influence in Washington can survive a scandal that now touches national security, Congress and his own boardroom at the same time.

Read our earlier coverage: a US senator called on Huang to resign over the spy affair, and how Singapore's chip hub is caught between Washington and Beijing.

Sources

• The Economic Times — Trump's close ties to Nvidia's Huang scrutinized after foreign intelligence concerns (Reuters)
• The Hindu — How Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's extramarital affair could cause collateral damage in Washington
• The Straits Times — Is Jensen Huang too powerful to punish?
• Business Standard — Jensen Huang's close ties to Trump come under scrutiny after spy claim