In all my years on the computer, I never thought I'd see graphics cards and international sex scandal in the same story. But this week, the Times broke the news that Jensen Huang, the CEO of the chipmaker Nvidia and one of the most important figures in AI and tech, has been having an affair with a top executive at a Singaporean data center company, who also happens to be an alleged Chinese spy and whose company was reportedly illegally funneling advanced Nvidia chips to Chinese companies. Huang remains in place at Nvidia, which is launching its own internal investigation. And the new Democratic Congress could follow with one of their own, especially since President Trump has apparently been aware of the allegations and unwilling to intervene for a year.
Look, I love a spy story, and I won't pretend that the sex scandal part of the story isn't a huge draw for me here. But I'm also fascinated that this lurid tale of international intrigue is all about graphics card trade policy. The fact is, this is the quintessential 21st century spy story. We're not talking about troop movements. No one's stealing top secret microfilm. Jensen Huang wears a leather jacket, not a tuxedo. What we have instead is a tale of executive hubris, Chinese holding companies, export controls, and of course, a race to create the world's most powerful and important technology. And because this is such a rich and fascinating intersection of our interests, we had to talk about it as soon as possible.
Today on what we're calling an emergency episode, I'm joined by technology journalist Stephen Witt, who literally wrote the book on Jensen Huang and Nvidia, to talk about these revelations. How did someone so powerful become an international espionage target and fall for it? Why did it take so long for this story to come out and who leaked it? How much of what Huang has been saying as a leader of the tech industry is now going to be called into question? And is it possible that this story is dramatic enough that it could pop the bubble we're also worried about? I'm Max Read. This is Hard Fork.
Joining me from a hotel room in Singapore is Stephen Witt, author of last year's book, The Thinking Machine, a biography of Jensen Huang and Nvidia. And he's going to help me try to wrap my head around this. Welcome to Hard Fork, Stephen.
Of course. What have your last 24, 48 hours been like as this story has been breaking?
I've been on every news network I think in the world has invited me on. I'm having to decline invitations that at any other time I would have been overjoyed to get. It's 3:30 in the morning where I am and I'm just reporting. I mean, I'm still working. It's nuts. What a story.
So it seems to me that there are sort of three big revelations in this unfolding story. At least things that were revelations to me. One is that Jensen Huang was having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
Two, that his affair partner's company, Megaspeed, is suspected to have been funneling Nvidia chips to China in contravention of US export bans. And then three, a sort of series of things we've now learned about the Trump administration's knowledge of this and possible intervention into Commerce Department investigations.
What I want to ask is how much of this was revelatory to you? You know, you spent a lot of time reporting on, talking to, thinking about Jensen Huang. How much of it was surprising?
Well, everyone knew that the Malaysia data center thing was a cutout to smuggle to China. That had been reported actually by the Times over a year ago, and even before that people understood that, you know, Malaysia didn't have a big AI development program. If 10 or 15 percent of Nvidia's revenue was coming from Malaysia, really that meant that those chips were being kind of distributed to China in one way or another. Now, some people think they were actually just kind of like brought to the data center, had the labels, you know, removed and replaced, and then just sent directly into mainland China as a real smuggling operation. Others were maybe like, well, maybe the data center is being used, you know, by Chinese assets in some way. But that was pretty well known.
The affair thing, there were whispers. It wasn't a complete stunner. I had heard stuff about this going into this summer particularly and had been trying to find this, but you know, I didn't have access to the thing that I guess really broke the story, which was actually White House intelligence. And this was the kind of surprising thing getting to the third part. Although this is a story about Nvidia and all, it's a story about kind of, you know, smuggling and affairs and stuff, I think Jensen found himself on the wrong side of the China hawks here, and I think that's where a lot of the reporting on this went. It went to the China hawks who had an axe to grind with Jensen.
Yeah. And I want to talk about that in a moment. But before we get there, I think one of the big reasons this is a big story is we don't have that many examples of CEOs who are as powerful as Jensen Huang. So can you just briefly for our listeners describe his role at Nvidia in the greater AI ecosystem and explain maybe, you know, why it's sort of uniquely damaging for him to be involved in a scandal like this.
Jensen is the founder CEO and basically king of Nvidia. He's been in that role for 30 plus years. You know, Nvidia is an unusual organization. Typically you'll have in a corporate org chart like the CEO and then like kind of, you know, a second layer of management of maybe six to eight people who assist the CEO in various roles. That doesn't exist in Nvidia. There's Jensen, there's nobody in the second tier, and then there's 60 people who report directly to him. So it's a very unusual arrangement. Nvidia is Jensen to a degree that I've almost never seen at any other corporation except maybe some of Elon Musk's stuff. It's really just this one guy in control managing and running everything. So if he is, you know, compromised, if he has to step down, if in some way he can't do his job, that's uniquely damaging for Nvidia.
Nvidia has grown so large selling AI hardware, selling microchips in particular into data centers, that it's now like a linchpin of the American economy. So there's this giant key man risk not just for Nvidia but actually to some extent for the entire US economy around this guy. So this is a painful one for US markets. It's very painful for Nvidia. You know, Jensen's judgment has to be called into question. This guy was bulletproof for the last decade. His stock did nothing but go up and every call he made was right. Now it doesn't look that way.
I understand this is going to take a little while to play out, but given his importance, as you've described it, I mean, would you be surprised if he was ousted?
I would be surprised if the board fired him. I don't think that would be in the best interest of Nvidia shareholders, and that's their job, right? I think that would make Nvidia's stock go down a lot. So I don't think the board will do that. The real risk to me to Jensen comes from what Democrats and Republicans are both asking for, which is congressional hearings and congressional testimony. And there's a number of ways that this can go wrong, but probably the most important one is the fact that it is so obvious to anyone looking at it for one second that these data centers in Malaysia were not for Malaysian people, they were for Chinese AI developers to get around these export restrictions. And Jensen could maybe play dumb and not understand that in an abstract way, but if he's sleeping with the head of the company, he can't play dumb anymore, right? Like he must have known what was going on. And that's against the law, right? So this creates an enormous, I think, legal liability both for Nvidia, they might have to pay a massive fine, and even for Jensen himself.
I, you know, the Republicans are asking him to testify behind closed doors. That's actually positive for Jensen because it's less embarrassing. I think the Democrats are going to hold their own or attempt to hold their own inquiries and hearings once they take control. And I imagine those will be public. I mean, it's going to be a tricky situation for him. I just don't know how he can say, 'Oh, I didn't know that Malaysia was a cutout. I didn't know about this woman.' And this is the thing that shocks me, okay? Like, you know, it's terrible that Jensen had an affair, but these things do happen, right, in the course of kind of like human life. I'm so shocked that Jensen had an affair with this specific woman who is just a walking red flag. Like, she had no background in computer science as far as anyone can tell, and suddenly she's running this kind of data center operation that's a front. This woman is a smuggler. And like, to begin a romantic relationship with someone like that just shows an almost like self-destructive amount of poor judgment. I can't believe nobody warned him. But you know, the thing about Jensen is he's very headstrong and doesn't listen to any advice.
I mean, so you know he... Yeah. I mean, let me ask you, you have sort of literally written the book on Jensen. You spent a lot of time sort of in his head. What do you think was going on there? Was it just a total lapse in judgment?
Yeah. Yeah. Pure hubris. I mean, I don't think there was some strategic thing he was doing. What do you think was going on in his head, you know? He fell for it. I mean, he got played. He got played. That's all you can say.
Yeah. In terms of just to return to the question of Jensen's role at Nvidia, if he does end up having to leave the company down the road, is there a succession plan in place? As you say, he's the king. Like, who's the heir?
I asked him, 'Who was your successor?' And he's like, 'Nobody.' He didn't have any kind of plan personally. He'd never personally selected or named any kind of successor. You know, again, hubris, maybe he thought he was immortal. You know, I did put this question to the board. This was back in 2024. And they say, 'Oh, you know, we've looked at some candidates.' One of those candidates was a guy named Jay Puri. He just retired. He's in his 70s, so I don't think it's going to be him.
You know, I think Jensen's going to fight this one as hard as he can. And Jensen is a fighter. He's a knife fighter. I actually think he will probably survive this, believe it or not. You know, the thing that would bring him down, as I say, is congressional hearings. I don't, you know, never say never. I don't think the board will get rid of him. And the board is comprised of some of the original founders of Nvidia, guys like Tench Coxe who have been there since day one, since 1993. You know, Tench Coxe has, I think, something like two to three billion dollars worth of Nvidia stock. Like, he's not going to do anything to damage the company.
Yeah. So, I know that two of Jensen's kids and his son-in-law work at Nvidia. They're not being, as far as you know, sort of groomed to take over his position at some point?
Yeah. So, this is an interesting question. This is the thing. Jensen always presented to me and to others this total family man image. I mean, he talked about his wife a lot and how much he loved her. They've been together since he was 17 years old. They got married in their early 20s. You know, if they get divorced, she may become one of the wealthiest women in America independently, sort of like MacKenzie Scott Bezos. But you know, his kids are close. He keeps them at the company, Madison and Spencer, but they don't have technical backgrounds. You know, Spencer studied photography. Madison went to culinary school. And whoever runs Nvidia, whoever is the CEO, has to be in addition to being a business person, a world-class computer scientist. They have to be one of the best computer scientists alive, which is what Jensen is. I mean, he's in the National Academy of Engineering. He's got a master's in electrical engineering. You know, you talk to people, yeah, his computer science skills are excellent. So they can be present for the transition. They will inherit a large number of shares, but I don't think they can run the company. Madison married this guy, Nico Capress, earlier this year. I think it was just about a month ago in Hawaii. So now Jensen has him as a son-in-law as well. He's been promoted, you know, rapidly within the company. We'll see if he actually has a role to play.
Yeah. Let's turn to the political question here. I think it's fair to say that Jensen is Trump's favorite CEO or certainly one of his favorite CEOs.
So the president says he will take him on his upcoming trip to China. Here's the Trump quote: 'I haven't heard he's done anything wrong. He dealt with somebody, but you know, so does everybody else. I think he's an honorable guy. I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to hear it. No, you can't do that with people. He has done an amazing job for our country.' That's the president of the United States on the man who is having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy. But let's talk, how did Jensen get into this position in the Trump administration? And furthermore, like, how did he become such an important figure in the AI sector in general?
Yeah, this is the amazing thing. When I was talking to Jensen in 2024, he had no interest in politics. He had never made a political donation and he had never endorsed a political candidate or indeed any policy. I mean, a couple things related to, you know, exports, but very little. You know, he was not a political guy and he didn't even attend Trump's inauguration. He was in Taiwan while Sam and all the rest of them were kind of behind Trump in that show of power in the inauguration.
But he got Trump's ear, and my impression is that he kind of became Trump's friend through this really kind of shameless approach of flattery. Jensen is an engineer, and what he told me is he thinks about everything as an engineering problem. Meaning you're going to study the inputs, look at the outputs, and then modify the inputs to control the system until you get the outcome that you want. Well, you know, Trump has this bottomless need for validation, and Jensen supplies that to him. He just shamelessly kisses his butt. And I think this makes Trump like him. You know, and the other thing is Jensen's a winner, right? Trump always wants to be around winners. And for most of this year, Nvidia was the single most valuable company in the world, maybe in human history. And so this made Trump and Jensen want to be close to each other. I think Jensen understands Trump at a certain level, how to program him, how to, you know, his ego is not going to get in the way of Jensen in the way it might for another tech executive.
Right. Let's talk about Jensen's stance on China because that's important to the story on a couple different levels. He's been a pretty outspoken advocate for essentially selling his own chips directly to China in contravention of US export restrictions on those chips, which have been put into place to try to slow down China's own AI development. Tell me a little bit about his stance, how he came to that, and how he's advocated for it.
