The internal probe followed a media report that Huang had a close relationship with a Chinese businesswoman who allegedly passed information to Beijing. Huang told Nvidia’s employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife, without disclosing details of the relationship.
The investigation, announced on Sunday, has put a spotlight on Huang’s future given Nvidia’s status as the world’s most valuable chip maker and his role as the most prolific salesman of the AI boom.
The fallout extended to South Korea, where Madison Huang, Huang’s daughter and an Nvidia executive, cancelled a planned visit to Seoul for an Nvidia conference that was set to begin on Monday, according to companies she had been scheduled to meet.
If we genuinely thought he was going to step down… the stock would be down – it would be an absolute bloodbath, to be honest.
Chris Weston, Pepperstone
Perpetual futures trading on the Hyperliquid exchange and after-hours share trading on the Blue Ocean system showed Nvidia at around US$178.60 a share, down more than 4% from Friday’s Nasdaq close of $186.64.
“The market’s probably telling you now this does no favours to the stock whatsoever in a time when there’s a lot of conjecture as to the build-out of data centres,” said Chris Weston, head of research at brokerage Pepperstone in Melbourne.
But Weston said he did not think Huang, whom he described as the “godfather of AI”, would be replaced. “If we genuinely thought he was going to step down… the stock would be down – it would be an absolute bloodbath, to be honest.”
The New York Times reported last month that Huang had a relationship with Alice Huang, who is not related to him and is a former executive of Singapore-based company Megaspeed. US authorities investigated her and concluded she was a Chinese intelligence asset, the newspaper reported.
Megaspeed did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Monday, a public holiday in Singapore.
Asian partners unaffected
Shares in Nvidia’s key Asian chip suppliers, TSMC, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, rebounded on Monday after last week’s sell-off of AI-related stocks. TSMC shares jumped 6.5%, while Samsung and SK Hynix climbed 2.9% and 4.7%, respectively.
Some prominent figures weighed in on Huang’s admission. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, said on X that the Nvidia CEO was an “incredible human”, but if “indeed this is more than an affair, then it is obviously a real problem”.
“I am hoping for a simple affair, not a risk to our national security,” he added.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented “I agree” on a post by Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, who said Huang “did something incredibly dumb” that was “bad for America” but that “Jensen is irreplaceable for America’s AI leadership”.
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he had not spoken to Huang about the allegations, but called him a fine person. “I hope everything’s fine. He’s done such an incredible job,” he added.
Asked whether he should have acted on the intelligence when he was briefed about it, Trump said: “No, I don’t think so. I think he’s an honourable guy. I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to hear it.”
The New York Times reported that Trump was briefed about the intelligence findings roughly a year ago and chose not to act on the information. – Heekyong Yang, Kyu-seok Shim, Tom Westbrook and Roger Tung, (c) 2026 Reuters
