Trump Backs Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Says U.S. Is Checking Report a Chinese Executive Targeted Him

Since The New York Times reported on Oct. 29 that U.S. intelligence officials believe a Chinese executive close to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was working for Beijing, the first public reaction from the White House has come from the president himself.

Speaking to reporters at his Florida residence on Saturday, Oct. 31, Donald Trump backed Huang. "I have a lot of respect for Jensen. I didn't know about the specific thing, but I hope he's going to be OK. He's a great, brilliant person, and we want to protect our brilliant people," Trump said. "We're going to check it out very closely."

Will Huang stay on as adviser?

Asked whether Huang would keep his role advising the administration on AI policy, Trump said: "I would like to say yes. I mean, unless we find out something to the contrary, I've always found Jensen Huang to be very above board." He added: "But you know, you're dealing in a very complex issue."

The answer is conditional, not a guarantee.

What the Times reported

The Times, citing unnamed sources, reported that U.S. officials concluded that Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a senior executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed, was a Chinese intelligence asset passing commercial information to Beijing. She is not related to Jensen Huang.

According to the Times, officials had first suspected her of helping smuggle Nvidia chips to China, which led them to surveil her. In the course of that surveillance, they reported she had developed a close relationship with the Nvidia chief.

The Times also reported that photos of the two sitting together at a bar were shared on LinkedIn in June 2024, and that Megaspeed began buying Nvidia chips weeks later. It said it found footage of her standing behind Huang at a Taipei restaurant as he spoke with reporters.

Megaspeed buys computing gear built on Nvidia chips and rents data center capacity to customers, including Alibaba. The company has been under U.S. scrutiny since late 2024, when a Commerce Department official visited its Malaysia facility and found Nvidia equipment that appeared to still be in boxes, suggesting it was being moved rather than installed.

The Times reported that officials briefed Trump on the Huang connection about a year ago. At that point, they did not believe Huang knew of her ties to Beijing. A year on, the paper reported, some senior White House officials doubt he is still unaware. It also reported that Huang never received an official intelligence warning.

Trump's remark that he "didn't know about the specific thing" sits alongside that account of an earlier briefing. Trump did not address the discrepancy, and no on-record source has reconciled the two.

What Nvidia, Megaspeed and Beijing say

Nvidia rejects the framing. A company spokesperson said Huang's interactions with Alice Huang "are not unusual or unexpected," adding: "Meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year."

The company also said Megaspeed and customers like it receive "ordinary business information, not sensitive Nvidia trade secrets," and "zero information relevant to national security." Nvidia said it treated Megaspeed "no different than many other regional cloud customers."

Its spokesperson added that Nvidia is "confident that if the U.S. government believes that any person is a threat to American industry, it would let us know."

Megaspeed told the Times that its "current leadership" takes the matter "extremely seriously and is committed to getting to the facts behind these allegations." A person familiar with the company's operations said Alice Huang has become less active since the U.S. investigations began.

China's Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as "groundless speculation."

Nothing in the reporting accuses Jensen Huang of wrongdoing. The allegation concerns the executive who dealt with him. No charges against Alice Huang or Megaspeed have been announced.

Why Huang's position matters

Huang is no ordinary customer contact. He advises Trump on AI policy and was among the tech CEOs who joined the president in Beijing in May for the meeting with Xi Jinping.

He has also lobbied the administration to loosen limits on selling Nvidia chips to China. Trump approved sales of older-generation Nvidia chips to China last year in exchange for a share of the revenue, but rejected a proposal to allow sales of more powerful chips.

Washington restricts advanced chips to China on national security grounds, while the head of the company that makes them argues for access to that market and sits close to the president. The alleged approach did not require a hack or a break-in. Per the Times account, it ran through an ordinary business relationship with a customer.

Trump has said the administration is looking into it. Nvidia says Huang's contacts were routine. What remains unanswered is what U.S. agencies actually concluded about Alice Huang's access, whether any of it reached the White House's chip-export decisions, and whether Trump's "unless we find out something to the contrary" condition gets tested at all.

No timeline for any review has been given.