The woman at the centre of the Nvidia spy scandal Alice Huang, used her Nvidia connections to help secure at least $7.5 billion in chip shipments to China.
For those who have been sleeping under a rock, Alice Huang is claimed to be a Chinese spy who had an affair with Nvidia boss Jensen Huang.
According to Reuters, Huang intervened when orders stalled under US export restrictions. Her network shifted more than 240,000 H100, H200 and some A100 processors into China. Some supplied facilities serving Alibaba, Tencent and smaller Chinese AI laboratories.
The claims give Nvidia’s investigators something considerably more substantial to examine than its chief executive’s marriage. Export controls look distinctly less reassuring when personal connections are alleged to help unblock supplies.
Republican senator and Senate Banking Committee member Kevin Cramer has called for Jensen Huang’s resignation, citing the potential for extortion.
“The potential for extortion is so tremendous that something as sensitive as Nvidia chips, I just think he’s got to go,” Cramer told Politico.
Nvidia’s independent directors have appointed former acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to investigate.
The board continues to support Huang and his leadership team. It says it has no reason to believe company secrets or US national security were compromised, while promising to examine all available information.
Huang has committed to cooperating with the review. The FBI is separately examining whether foreign intelligence targeted him, while China denies the espionage allegations.
The market damage has grown: Nvidia lost about $430 billion in value across Monday and Tuesday’s trading, with its shares falling 9.5 per cent.
