US President Donald Trump’s close relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang came under renewed scrutiny on Monday, after the company said its board was investigating whether the tech executive has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. But not everyone inside the Trump administration is backing the tech billionaire. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had reportedly overseen the memo that warned top officials about Huang’s potential “entanglement.”
Trump’s defense of Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang has triggered a divide within the Trump administration and the Republican Party following reports that Huang had an affair with an alleged Chinese intelligence asset. According to Politico, senior administration officials acknowledge that the scandal is deepening internal divides, with some warning that it will permanently damage Nvidia’s standing among Washington policymakers who favor stricter AI export controls.
According to multiple people briefed on the matter, Rubio oversaw a highly classified memo this spring. It warned senior Trump administration officials that Huang was in a close relationship with a Chinese spy. The memo drew on classified electronic surveillance of Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen. She was a senior executive at a Singapore-based company that was buying Nvidia’s advanced AI chips and was under investigation for smuggling them into China.
GOP lawmakers have bucked Trump’s defense of Huang, arguing that the situation poses a serious national security risk and leaning into the scandal to push for tighter restrictions on Chinese chip sales. Closed-door talks regarding the National Defense Authorization Act have seen tech lobbyists and lawmakers leverage the controversy to argue that the federal government must take a heavier hand in regulating who can access advanced U.S. chips.
House committees have requested that Huang appear for a closed-door briefing, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike are pressing for deeper investigations into how the tech titan operates and lobbies the government.
Huang is one of Trump’s closest allies in Silicon Valley, and the relationship between the two dates to at least 2025. Over the past two years, he has repeatedly voiced support for the administration’s agenda and become a regular presence in Washington as Nvidia sought to sell advanced chips to the Chinese market.
Advanced chips are the backbone of the US AI boom and government officials have previously tried to restrict China’s access to them through export controls to stifle its AI capabilities. Nvidia’s board launched its probe after a New York Times report said Huang had a close relationship with Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, who US intelligence officials believe passed information to the Chinese government. Nvidia shares closed down more than 4% on Monday.
“I’m pushing to investigate Jensen Huang and Nvidia to determine whether our national security was compromised,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, in a post on X. “We need answers about the relationship between AI billionaires and the Trump administration, who’s making these decisions, and who’s really got their hand on the wheel.”
Democrats on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee wrote to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, calling on the Commerce Department to halt exports of advanced AI chips to China. US Representatives Gabe Amo, Gregory Meeks and Sydney Kamlager-Dove sought answers by December 1 on whether top officials at the Commerce Department were aware of US intelligence linking Alice Huang, a former executive of Singapore-based Megaspeed who is not related to the Nvidia CEO, to Chinese efforts to obtain Nvidia chips.
Jensen Huang, the Nvidia CEO, has a direct line to the US president. A reporter saw Huang’s full name pop up on Trump’s phone in December 2025.
Huang flew with Trump to China on Air Force One in May, the first visit by a US president to China in nearly a decade. Huang attended a high-profile state dinner in September for Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House. The company committed $25 million for Trump’s planned White House ballroom, according to media reports.
The New York Times reported that Trump had been briefed on Huang’s relationship with the woman and on intelligence that she was giving information to the Chinese government, and that he chose not to act on the information. The White House press office on Monday declined to comment further on Trump’s relationship with Huang.
China’s foreign ministry said the spy accusations were “groundless.” Reuters could not determine Alice Huang’s location to seek comment from her on Monday.
Huang’s relationship with Trump has coincided with several favorable policy developments for the company. In April 2025, the administration backed off plans to restrict exports of certain Nvidia AI chips to China after Huang attended a dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Bureau Report
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