Chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) has announced that it is investigating CEO Jensen Huang’s relationship with a businesswoman who is alleged to be a Chinese spy.
U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Alice Huang, an executive at cloud company MegaSpeed, with passing information to Chinese government officials in Beijing.
Nvidia said its board of directors has launched an independent investigation following reports that Huang was the target of a “foreign intelligence effort.”
Huang said in a statement released by Nvidia that he “fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it.”
The Nvidia co-founder and CEO told staff in an email that he had “fallen short” of his responsibility to serve his colleagues, the board, partners, and shareholders around the world.
“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry,” Huang said in the email.
China’s Foreign Ministry has responded to news of the allegations of spying against Alice Huang by saying that the “so-called Chinese spy narrative” was unsubstantiated.
The investigation has raised questions about Jensen Huang’s future as CEO of Nvidia. The company’s stock is down 5% on news that he is being probed by Nvidia’s board.
Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 as a company that originally made microchips and graphics processing units (GPUs) to run video games.
Over the past 33 years, Huang has built Nvidia into the world’s leading maker of microchips and processors that run artificial intelligence (A.I.) applications. He is also president of the company.
The technology giant, which has been a major beneficiary of the A.I. infrastructure buildout, is scheduled to report its third-quarter financial results on Nov. 17.
Prior to today (Nov. 9), NVDA stock had fallen 6% over the past 12 months to trade at $186.64 U.S. per share.
