Nvidia shares slump amid investigation into CEO Jensen Huang

What the report says

Nvidia shares fell more than 4 percent in early trading on Monday after the company said its board had opened an independent investigation into CEO Jensen Huang. The probe follows reports that Huang may have been the target of a Chinese intelligence operation and that he had a close personal relationship with a business executive linked to a Nvidia partner company. Al Jazeera reported that Huang told employees he was not faithful to his wife, while also saying he would cooperate fully with the inquiry.

The company said the board takes U.S. national and economic security seriously and has no reason, so far, to believe that Nvidia secrets or national security were compromised. Even so, the review will examine all available information. The developments have put Huang’s future in focus at Nvidia, a semiconductor company valued at about $4.5 trillion. Huang owns 3.6 percent of the firm, but does not control a majority of the voting power.

The report also notes that this is not the first time Huang’s ties to a Chinese executive have drawn scrutiny. In October, The New York Times reported on his relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, which described itself as a key business partner of Nvidia’s cloud computing business in Asia-Pacific. U.S. authorities reportedly concluded she was a Chinese intelligence asset, while Beijing rejected those claims. The controversy comes during a volatile period for AI stocks, with wider concerns in Washington about the industry and data-centre expansion.