Nvidia shares fell 5% in New York premarket trading after its board launched an investigation into CEO Jensen Huang's relationship with a woman identified in several reports as a suspected Chinese spy. Beijing dismissed the espionage allegations as "unsubstantiated."
Two days after the Financial Times reported that U.S. intelligence believes he had a romantic relationship with alleged Chinese spy Alice Huang (no family relation to Jensen), Jensen apologized on Sunday: "I was unfaithful to my wife."
Nvidia's board responded to the reports and said it had "no reason to believe" national security or company secrets had been compromised.
The revelation comes a little more than a week before President Trump and President Xi are set to meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
We cited Taiwanese semiconductor analyst Andrew Lu, whose take on the Nvidia spy scandal made the point that Washington is using the scandal not to expose the affair but to get three things it could not get while Huang was the loudest voice in the room:
The purpose of this scandal is by no means to expose an affair. It is to force through three critical objectives that had made no headway in the tech war between the US and China because Jensen Huang opposed them.
Earlier today, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun called the allegations "unsubstantiated" at a briefing with reporters.
China's state-run Global Times reinforced Beijing's pushback on the scandal, denying any government connection to Jensen's affair with Alice and accusing MSM corporate media of "going crazy" with speculative reporting.
"All it took were a few photographs showing Asian faces and Nvidia's previous efforts to push for relaxing trade curbs on China," the Chinese outlet said, accusing MSM of manufacturing the information operation and narrative control.
"Whenever China-US relations begin to improve, someone often fires a cold shot from behind," the outlet said in a commentary, warning that an "anti-China script" could disrupt technology and trade ties.
Nvidia shares are down about 5% in premarket trading. So far, the selling remains contained, with Nasdaq 100 futures marginally higher, up about 40 bps, and S&P 500 contracts up about 70 bps. Technology stocks led gains in Asia and outperformed in Europe following last week's AI stock meltdown.
Recap of what happened this past weekend:
Does Washington now move to revoke H200 export licenses for China and, in return, sever chip-smuggling networks via shell companies across Asia, and put Jensen and Nvidia on a national security leash through congressional oversight?