The US president has confirmed federal investigators are examining Nvidia’s chief executive over his links to a suspected Chinese intelligence operative, dramatically raising the stakes for the world’s most valuable chipmaker.
Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that “I know the FBI is looking into it,” while simultaneously defending Jensen Huang, saying he believed the executive was unaware of the woman’s alleged espionage connections.
The disclosure came as Nvidia (NVDA) shares, already battered by the widening scandal, closed 4.3 per cent lower at $178.67, after falling nearly nine per cent at one point during the session.
That single-day rout wiped approximately $190bn, or £145bn, from Nvidia’s market capitalisation, a loss that has now drawn both federal scrutiny and litigation from aggrieved investors.
A shareholder class-action lawsuit was filed in a federal court in San Jose, California, accusing Nvidia and Huang of concealing national security risks tied to his personal relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive linked to Singapore-based data centre firm Megaspeed.
The complaint was brought by shareholder Mark Kistenmacher and is being pursued by the Rosen Law Firm, which alleges that Nvidia breached US securities laws by withholding material information harmful to its reputation and business outlook.
Investors who purchased Nvidia shares between 9 October 2025 and 8 November 2026 are covered by the proposed class action, which seeks unspecified financial damages.
At the centre of the allegations is Alice Huang, whom US intelligence officials have reportedly identified as a Chinese intelligence asset, a characterisation Beijing has firmly rejected.
Nvidia’s previous public statements about its commercial dealings with Megaspeed are described in the lawsuit as misleading because they omitted any mention of Huang’s personal relationship with the company’s former executive.
Huang acknowledged on Sunday that the relationship had been more than professional, telling employees, “My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”
Nvidia’s board responded by launching an independent investigation into whether its chief executive had been deliberately targeted by a foreign intelligence operation.
The company stated it “had no reason to believe” that confidential data or national security interests had been compromised, and directors publicly reaffirmed their support for Huang’s continued leadership.
The convergence of a federal investigation, a nine-figure market value collapse, and active litigation represents an extraordinary concentration of risk for a company that has defined the artificial intelligence hardware boom in recent years.