Nvidia's board of directors said on Sunday, November 8, that it is opening an independent investigation into reports that chief executive Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, will oversee the review. The board said it has 'no reason to believe' that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, and that Huang fully supports the review, has committed to cooperating, and will remain CEO while it runs.

The announcement followed New York Times reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies determined Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and former executive at Singapore-based data-centre company Megaspeed, was gathering information for Beijing. According to the Times, Huang acknowledged to the board that he had been intimate with her, and apologised in a message to staff and family. Megaspeed has bought more than $4.8 billion worth of Nvidia chips over the past two years, the Times reported; the two Huangs are not related.

Nvidia's chips power much of the AI build-out and sit at the centre of U.S. export restrictions on China, which is why a report of this kind reaches the board and Congress: three U.S. House committee chairmen have asked Huang to attend a closed-door briefing on November 18. China's foreign ministry said on Monday that the spy story was unsubstantiated, Reuters reported. Nvidia gave no timetable for the investigation.