Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Summoned by Congress over Chinese Espionage Concerns

Republican leaders of three House committees have asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to attend a closed-door briefing on November 18, following reports that US intelligence officials believe he was targeted by a Chinese espionage operation. The lawmakers - who oversee China, foreign affairs, and intelligence - want to assess whether the alleged activity gave China access to sensitive US technology or information. They also intend to question Huang about Nvidia’s safeguards against foreign espionage.

The reported concern centers on Alice Huang, a Chinese executive at Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed, which has purchased billions of dollars’ worth of Nvidia chips. Nvidia denies that customer meetings exposed trade secrets or national-security information, and says Huang meets many customer executives and travels with a strong security team. The company says it has not been told by the US government that anyone posed a threat to its industry, and it would not confirm whether Huang will attend. After learning of US concerns about Megaspeed, Nvidia conducted inspections at the company’s Singapore sites and found no evidence its chips were being diverted to China. Megaspeed had previously faced US scrutiny over possible chip smuggling, but no charges were filed. The case unfolds amid heightened concern about Nvidia’s supply chain and export-control evasion, including the recent arrest of a Supermicro co-founder charged with smuggling Nvidia chips to China; he denies wrongdoing.