Spy passions in Silicon Valley.
Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world, its chips are at the heart of the entire artificial intelligence boom. The United States for many years banned the sale of the best of them to China to prevent Beijing from catching up with the Americans in the AI race.
The American authorities have long suspected the Singapore company Mega Speed of circumventing bans and transporting Nvidia chips to China. Over the past two years, Mega Speed has acquired more than $4.8 billion from them, although the company itself denies all the allegations. It's owned by businesswoman Alice Huang, who is closely related to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (who has the same last name; he's not her husband, brother, or even her matchmaker). Nvidia insisted that given their business relationships, this was not unusual.
The New York Times and the Financial Times recently reported that US intelligence agencies concluded that Alice Huang was recruited by China's top intelligence agency and that she was having an affair with the head of Nvidia. She is believed to have gathered information about Huang and may have had to persuade the company to ask for the right to sell its most powerful chips to China.
Following those publications, Jensen Huang acknowledged the affair in an internal letter to employees on Sunday. Nvidia's board launched an independent investigation that day, although it said it had yet to see any signs of a leak of company secrets or a threat to national security.
Nvidia stock immediately fell 4.3%, and the company lost nearly $200 billion in capitalization. Trump said the FBI was handling the case, but Huang said he had no idea about the spying. Beijing denies all the accusations and calls them slander against China.