Trump says FBI is looking into Nvidia CEO affair as shares drop over 4%

President Donald Trump said on Monday that the FBI is looking into Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy, and that Huang told him by phone he had “no idea” she was a spy. The same day, Nvidia’s share price fell by more than 4%, wiping about $250bn off its value, and Huang and the company were named in a proposed shareholder class action in California.

This is an update to Unicorn API’s earlier report, Nvidia opens probe into CEO Jensen Huang’s ties to alleged Chinese spy, which covered the board’s independent investigation and Huang’s staff memo admitting an affair. Since then, the story has moved to the White House podium, the stock market and the courts. New reports also say Huang hired a crisis communications firm a year ago, and a short seller’s warning from May is resurfacing. The core spying allegation still rests on news reports citing US officials, and Beijing rejects it. The story began with reports of a US intelligence memo on the alleged recruitment.

What Trump said about Huang at the White House

Trump took several questions about Huang at a White House press briefing on Monday. He did not say when he first learned of the relationship. Asked directly, he said he had been “hearing about it” and “reading a little bit about it over a period of time. But, not too long ago”. The BBC also asked him when he was made aware. It reports he said he was informed “over a period of time” without being specific.

On the FBI, Trump said: “I know the FBI’s looking into it in terms of something else”. He did not explain the investigation or say when it began, and the FBI declined to comment to the BBC.

Trump said he called Huang on Monday “just to see if he’s feeling alright” and asked him whether he knew:

“He said, I had no idea that she was a spy. And I really believe him.”

Trump called Huang “a very honorable man” who “built a great company,” and said, “I believe he’s suffering greatly”. He said he did not expect to raise the case with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a visit next week, but added, “I’m sure, President Xi will ask me about it”.

The timing question

The timing matters because of earlier reporting. The Verge notes that in October, The New York Times reported Trump had been briefed “roughly a year ago” on intelligence about the relationship and did nothing with it. It also notes the Times reported Secretary of State Marco Rubio helped draft a memo to Trump officials about the relationship before Trump visited China in May. The BBC describes the Times report as saying Rubio sent the memo to top officials “last spring”.

Trump said he did not hear about the alleged ties before his May trip to China. Asked whether he read the Rubio memo, he said: “It could have been mentioned. Certainly it didn’t make much of an impact on me”. The reports do not agree exactly on when the memo circulated, and the memo itself is not public.

Market and legal fallout for Nvidia

The BBC reports that the revelations knocked about $250bn off Nvidia’s value on Monday as its share price fell more than 4%. Nvidia is the world’s second most valuable company after Apple, according to the BBC.

Also on Monday, a proposed class action filed in California accuses Huang and Nvidia of defrauding shareholders by concealing his ties to the suspected spy. According to the BBC, the suit alleges the company lied to the media about Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, “who is suspected of seeking to help smuggle Nvidia products to China”. The BBC says it contacted Nvidia for comment on the lawsuit.

Congress is also involved. Huang has been asked to attend a joint closed-door briefing for several congressional committees next week, and it is unclear whether he will appear. The BBC quotes the request letter as saying the briefing would cover “Nvidia’s security protocols against foreign adversary espionage and your interactions with a publicly reported People’s Republic of China (PRC) intelligence asset: Megaspeed executive Alice Huang”.

Item	Status as reported
Nvidia board investigation	Independent investigation commissioned
FBI	Trump says it is looking into it; FBI declined comment
Share price, Monday	Down more than 4%, about $250bn in value
Shareholder suit	Proposed class action filed in California
Congress	Closed-door briefing requested for next week

Nvidia, Huang and Beijing respond

Nvidia says it has no reason to believe the company’s secrets or US national security were compromised. Huang has admitted being “unfaithful” to his wife and apologised to her and their children. On Monday he said he was “committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America’s national security” and would cooperate with the company’s investigation.

Beijing has rejected the claims that Huang was targeted. China’s foreign ministry calls the allegations “entirely groundless, speculative and intended to smear and malign China”.

US intelligence officials believe Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was a spy for Beijing, according to The New York Times as cited by the BBC. She is not related to Jensen Huang. Sources describe her role at Megaspeed, a Singapore company that buys Nvidia chips, differently. The BBC calls her its managing director, and TechCrunch describes an October 2025 Times report that called her Megaspeed’s CEO. The BBC reports that Megaspeed’s Singapore office appeared to be operating and staffed. A staff member reached by phone had no comment and directed questions to the company’s PR team.

The PR firm hired a year earlier

Wired reports that Huang hired Heller Inc., a crisis communications firm known for handling sex scandals, at least a year before he publicly acknowledged the affair, according to TechCrunch’s summary. The firm’s founder, Risa Heller, has advised prominent men through personal scandals and sexual misconduct accusations, according to a 2023 New York Magazine profile.

Wired also reports that Nvidia’s internal communications team was told to copy Heller Inc. on press inquiries about Huang. That instruction reportedly came shortly after an October 2025 New York Times report on whether Nvidia was helping Chinese companies evade US chip export restrictions. That Times report said Megaspeed had acquired nearly $2 billion worth of Nvidia chips. Heller and Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The hiring is reported but not confirmed by either party.

The report matters for the shareholder case. The lawsuit alleges Nvidia misled the media about the relationship. Before the scandal, Nvidia spokespeople had described Huang’s interactions with the Megaspeed executive as “not unusual or unexpected” and said, “Meetings with customers are part of a CEO’s job”.

A short seller’s warning from May

Six months before the scandal broke, New York-based short seller Culper Research questioned the relationship in a May 13 report announcing a short position in Nvidia. A short seller profits when a share price falls. According to TechCrunch, the report called the relationship “uncomfortably close,” said Huang was seen partying and socialising with Alice Huang on multiple occasions, and claimed some Nvidia employees wondered whether the two had a “special relationship”. The Verge reports that Culper placed the two at a dinner in Taiwan in May 2025.

Culper made broader claims too. It argued that the China business Nvidia lost to export controls had been rerouted through Southeast Asia, and that Megaspeed was secretly financed by Alibaba through shell companies. It cited financial records showing Megaspeed’s total liabilities and equity grew from $33 million at the end of 2023 to around $3 billion by the end of 2024, much of it as refundable deposits from an unidentified source. TechCrunch notes that the Financial Times reported on Monday that documents show Alibaba lent money to Megaspeed through subsidiaries.

TechCrunch also stresses the limits. Culper stood to benefit financially from these allegations, and its claims about possible illegal chip diversion have not been independently verified.

Why the export-control stakes matter to builders

For developers and founders, Nvidia is more than one stock. The Verge describes its chips as “the bedrock” of advanced US AI work, with demand outpacing supply for years. Nvidia also holds about $99 billion in equity investments in frontier AI labs, neoclouds (newer cloud providers focused on renting GPUs), infrastructure companies and others. A crisis at the top of that company affects chip supply, investment and export policy for the whole sector.

The policy question is the most serious one. Huang has lobbied the Trump administration and Congress to loosen export controls on advanced chips sold to China. The Verge’s timeline, drawn largely from Times reporting, runs as follows:

• April 2025: Nvidia disclosed new administration restrictions on its China-specific H20 chips.
• May 2025: the Taiwan dinner with Alice Huang, according to Culper.
• July 2025: Huang reportedly met Trump in the Oval Office to argue for looser restrictions. Days later, Nvidia announced H20 sales to China had been approved.
• October 2025: Huang lobbied to sell more advanced chips to China ahead of Trump’s meeting with Xi. Trump decided not to proceed.

The Verge also reports, citing the Times, that Megaspeed’s Malaysia-based sister company spent $4.8 billion or more on Nvidia chips and technology between June 2024 and February 2026, based on ImportGenius trade records. That is unusually large for a small company. Hanna Dohmen, a senior research analyst at CSET, told The Verge that an alleged spy would likely want to understand “what the US government is thinking on export controls.” Other targets she named were trade information such as “who’s buying Nvidia’s chips, who’s getting them first, what’s coming next in terms of AI chips”.

No source links the affair to any specific policy decision. The open question is whether it shaped Huang’s lobbying, and through him, US chip export policy.

What to watch next

• The congressional briefing next week. Whether Huang attends, and what committees say afterward.
• The FBI’s role. Trump’s remarks are the only public sign of an FBI inquiry, and its scope is unclear.
• Trump’s meeting with Xi. Trump expects Xi to raise the matter.
• Nvidia’s board investigation and the shareholder suit. Both could test what the company said publicly about the relationship.
• Megaspeed’s funding. Further reporting on the reported Alibaba loans and the chip purchases through Southeast Asia.