Former Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang misled several of the company's senior leaders about the nature of his relationship with Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, Reuters reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence reviewed by the news agency.
According to the report, Huang told Nvidia's general counsel, Tim Teter, and its chief marketing officer, Alison Wagonfeld, that his interactions with Alice Huang reflected standard business dealings with a customer. In fact, the two were having an affair, the sources said. Reuters said it was the first news organisation to report on the correspondence, which dates from October.
Huang resigned as Nvidia's chief executive on Thursday, ending a 33-year run at the chipmaker he co-founded. In a statement on Sunday he apologised for being unfaithful to his wife and for disappointing the company, without naming Alice Huang.
What the messages showed
Reuters reviewed several exchanges from October, on condition that it did not quote from the messages verbatim. In two separate messages that month, Huang told Nvidia leaders including Teter and Wagonfeld that the interactions reflected standard business dealings with customers, and in other messages he affirmed the routine nature of his dealings with Megaspeed International, the Nvidia customer where Alice Huang was a senior executive.
The pattern was not new, the sources said. During the autumn of 2025 and again in October 2026, as press queries drew Nvidia leaders' attention to his relationship with Megaspeed and Alice Huang, Huang described their interactions as appropriate at both times.
Huang also discussed taking legal action against The New York Times after the newspaper published an article in October last year drawing attention to his meetings in public with Alice Huang. Neither Nvidia nor Huang ultimately filed a lawsuit, and a Times spokesperson said the paper received no legal demand.
A relationship dating back to 2023
It is unclear when the relationship became intimate, Reuters said. Photographs posted online and verified by the news agency show Huang and Alice Huang together in the United States, China and elsewhere, dating as far back as December 2023.
Alice Huang, who is not related to Jensen Huang despite sharing his surname, was a former top executive of Megaspeed International. United States authorities were investigating her over suspicions that she was spying for China, a claim Beijing has denied. Reuters said it had not independently verified whether she was working on behalf of the Chinese government.
Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg published on October 29 that the US government had not informed him about its suspicions regarding Alice Huang.
Fallout at Nvidia
On November 10, the independent members of Nvidia's board said they had hired the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct an independent investigation, after reports by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal about Huang's relations with Alice Huang and the spying suspicions.
The Times reported earlier this week that Huang also had an extramarital relationship with an Nvidia employee, and Reuters reported on Thursday that he had another intimate relationship with a different Nvidia employee. Neither Teter nor Wagonfeld responded to Reuters' requests for comment, and a representative for Huang and an Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment.
The scandal has battered Nvidia's shares. The stock has fallen more than 30 percent since its October 6 closing high, erasing more than $1.8 trillion from the company's market capitalisation, as investors weigh the leadership vacuum and the investigations now circling the world's most valuable chipmaker.
