Jensen Huang may be out at Nvidia, but the questions surrounding his relationship with a suspected Chinese spy—and what it might have meant for American national security—are only growing more serious.
The billionaire’s resignation Thursday has done little to quiet a scandal that threatens to reach well beyond Nvidia’s boardroom, raising questions about the Trump administration’s controversial decisions to loosen restrictions on AI chip sales to China. Huang played an influential role in shaping those policies. Now, Congress wants to know whether his personal relationship with a Chinese businesswoman exposed sensitive American technology or national security information to Beijing—and what government officials knew about the potential risks.
Despite his departure as Nvidia’s chairman and CEO, Huang has reportedly agreed to testify before congressional investigators. The former CEO and lawmakers have been discussing the timing of the closed-door hearing, which could provide answers about his relationship with an executive at a company suspected of funneling restricted Nvidia chips to Chinese AI labs.
Three Republican committee chairs in the House of Representatives—Reps. Brian Mast, John Moolenaar, and Rick Crawford—requested Huang’s testimony in a November 4 letter, more than a week before his resignation. Mast told reporters Thursday that his committee still wanted to speak to Huang, adding that his staff had been in contact with Huang’s team as recently as Wednesday night. Later that day, Bloomberg and NBC News reported that Huang had agreed to appear without a subpoena.
The request followed an October 29 New York Times investigation into Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a company U.S. intelligence had suspected for more than a year of collaborating with the Chinese government and helping funnel trade-restricted AI chips to Chinese labs. The lawmakers are concerned that Alice Huang may also have provided Beijing with access to trade secrets and sensitive national security information.
“Recent reports raise significant national security concerns regarding the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) access to sensitive U.S. technology and information,” the chairmen wrote. “The issue of PRC infiltration and access to cutting-edge U.S. technology is core to the investigative work of our three committees this Congress. It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which U.S. national security has been placed at risk.”
Trump could be implicated, too
But the congressional scrutiny is no longer limited to Huang or Nvidia. Lawmakers are increasingly asking whether the Trump administration overlooked warnings about potential Chinese espionage while allowing the company to expand sales of advanced AI chips to China.
On November 11, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller demanding that the administration preserve documents concerning Nvidia’s chip exports, the suspected intelligence operation, and government investigations into Megaspeed.
The senators specifically requested records concerning an intelligence memorandum reportedly circulated to senior administration officials ahead of Trump’s May 2026 visit to China. They also sought communications between Huang and Trump, records of discussions about chip export restrictions, and documents concerning the government’s handling of its investigation into Megaspeed. The question, at the core of their inquiry, is whether national security concerns were sidelined as Huang and the Trump administration pursued policies that benefited Nvidia.
Huang has been one of the tech industry’s most prominent supporters of Donald Trump. Nvidia contributed $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and $25 million toward the White House ballroom now under construction. Huang himself has visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and the White House numerous times, and has traveled with the president.
His influence on U.S. export policy regarding AI chips is evident. He’s credited with persuading the Trump administration to allow sales of Nvidia H20 and H200 chips to China. Huang argued that letting the chips, and the CUDA software framework that runs them, proliferate around the world was good for America. Nvidia also agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of revenue from H20 sales and 25% from H200 sales.
Nvidia defended the arrangement last December. “The Administration’s licensing process will ensure that sales of H200 to authorized customers worldwide do not deprive U.S. customers of anything—and will in fact benefit American national and economic security,” spokesman John Rizzo said in a statement to Fast Company. “Offering H200 to approved and known commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, raises no cybersecurity risk and strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America.”
Those assurances now face renewed scrutiny. Megaspeed bought billions of dollars’ worth of Nvidia chips in recent years, including some of its most powerful Blackwell chips, which remain off limits to Chinese labs. A New York Times report last year described finding boxes of powerful Nvidia chips at a nearly empty Megaspeed office in Malaysia, raising suspicions that the company was serving as a conduit for restricted technology bound for China.
There are also unanswered questions about the government’s response. The Commerce Department opened an investigation into Megaspeed last year, but the inquiry was subsequently transferred to the Department of Justice, with little publicly known about what happened afterward. The Warren–Coons letter seeks records that could help establish what senior Trump administration officials knew about the suspected Chinese intelligence operation, why the White House and the Commerce Department allowed chip shipments to Megaspeed to continue, and whether or not the White House disregarded national security recommendations to accommodate Nvidia’s commercial interests.
These questions could become more consequential when Democrats take control of Congress in January. Coons, who is expected to chair the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has also called for an investigation into Huang and Nvidia to determine whether national security was compromised while Nvidia and the White House benefited financially from chip sales to China.
“We need answers about the relationship between AI billionaires and the Trump administration,” Coons wrote on X.
For Nvidia, meanwhile, the immediate consequences have been severe. Its shares have lost nearly a quarter of their value—24.6%—since The New York Times first reported on Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang on October 29.
Nvidia has not publicly offered a detailed explanation for accepting Huang’s resignation. Its SEC filing simply states that the board accepted his departure. But the decision may have had less to do with the morality of Huang’s personal conduct than with the growing financial and political risks of keeping him in charge.
