US lawmakers demand details on Nvidia amid Jensen Huang scandal

WASHINGTON – Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy prompted bipartisan demands on Capitol Hill for more information as lawmakers rushed to assess the potential national security fallout from the scandal.Senate Majority Leader John Thune said lawmakers want to respond “in a serious way” to anything that poses a threat to US national security.Congress, he said, is trying to get more information about the nature of Huang’s relationship “and the connections that come with it.” Influential members of the House and Senate met on Nov 9 behind closed doors for a security briefing with CIA director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton where Huang was discussed. “We all obviously have questions but I’m not going to weigh in on any substance,” Senate Intelligence top Democrat Mark Warner. “I’m not going to speculate at this point in time because again we need to hear from the FBI.”The growing focus from lawmakers related to Huang’s affair, and his attempts to influence the policy on China chip sales, adds to pressure for the chief executive, who personally lobbied President Donald Trump for loosened controls.Nvidia shares dropped 4.3% on Nov 9, hitting a seven-month low.Two other senators on Nov 9 upped their pressure on the Commerce Department to tighten restrictions on Nvidia and its chief executive. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, and Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, urged Commerce officials to suspend or reconsider Nvidia’s export licences to China and conduct a full national security review of the company. “Nvidia has reportedly received approvals to export hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips to China, including to companies tied to China’s military, all while attempting to influence the debate over chip controls,” Banks said in a statement, adding that Huang’s confirmation of a relationship with a suspected spy for China “raises important questions Nvidia must answer about the extent to which these activities were related.” Banks and Warren, who both serve on the Senate Banking Committee, are working together on legislation that would limit China’s chip purchases.The effort would temporarily bar Nvidia from selling Chinese customers any chip more advanced than the H200, which Trump approved for sale in 2025.Lawmakers are now negotiating over that Bill to see if it can be included in an annual defence package that typically passes in December.Meanwhile, Chris Coons, a Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement that he is also “pushing to investigate Jensen Huang and Nvidia to determine whether our national security was compromised.”Huang is already facing a board investigation and an outstanding request from three Republican House members who last week asked him to provide a closed-door briefing on his interactions with Huang Le, a woman that the New York Times has reported that US officials believe to be a Chinese spy. Huang Le – also known as Alice Huang – was also an executive at Megaspeed International, a Singapore firm that was spun out of a Chinese gaming enterprise.That data centre company, which is Nvidia’s largest South-east Asian customer, has also been under investigation for months related to potential chip smuggling, Bloomberg has reported.Megaspeed and Nvidia have denied wrongdoing. Over the last two weeks, Huang had defended his relations with Megaspeed and its executives as “completely normal,” but he reversed course on the afternoon of Nov 8, sending an apology message to Nvidia staff saying that he had been unfaithful to his wife.Nvidia said on Nov 9 that its board was investigating whether Huang been “the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”Huang’s admission, and earlier statements that run counter to his latest comments, have left Jensen Huang’s future as the face of the AI infrastructure boom and head of one of the world’s most valuable companies hanging in the balance.Key lawmakers said the scandal also underlines the need for additional legislation to restrict chip access to China.“I think we’re going to work hard to make sure that those provisions make it into the final version of the National Defence Authorisation Act,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. BLOOMBERG