Three from CNBC. First up the headliner, November 9:
- Nvidia is investigating whether CEO Jensen Huang had an affair with a woman intelligence agencies belive is a Chinese spy.
- He has admitted to an affair, understood to be with an executive at Singapore-based cloud provider Megaspeed.
- It has faced scrutiny over allegations that Nvidia chips it acquired were diverted to China. Megaspeed denies wrongdoing and says inspections found no violations.
Singapore-based cloud computing company MegaSpeed is in the international spotlight after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted to being unfaithful to his wife, following reports linking him to MegaSpeed executive Alice Huang.
U.S. intelligence officials believe she is a Chinese intelligence asset, according to The New York Times.
While the Nvidia CEO — one of the world’s most prominent executives and a figurehead of the AI industry – did not name MegaSpeed or Alice Huang in his statement, he acknowledged his infidelity and said Nvidia’s Board of Directors had begun an independent investigation “regarding the national security concerns raised in news reports.”
“I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American,” he said.
Nvidia said in a statement it had “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised,” but that its “Board’s inquiry will examine all available information.”
Tech darling Nvidia sells advanced AI and data center chips and has customers including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta and Oracle. The explosion in AI adoption in recent years has fueled its stock and pushed it to a $5 trillion market cap this year.
What is MegaSpeed?
MegaSpeed sells services to Asia Pacific-based companies that need large amounts of computing capacity, usually for AI projects, by selling access to computing resources hosted in data centers in Southeast Asia.
It advertises itself as a “core business partner” of Nvidia’s computing power cloud business in the region, allowing customers to rent computing power from Nvidia GPUs, or “graphics processing units” — specialized chips designed to do many calculations at the same time.
The service allows businesses to complete costly AI operations without buying and operating all the hardware themselves. It can also give customers remote access to computing power from advanced chips located outside China. U.S. controls restrict the export of some advanced chips to China, but remote access is a separate question....
....MUCH MORE
November 8:
Read Huang’s email to his staff and statement from Nvidia’s board of directors
November 9:
Nvidia stock falls 4% as scrutiny turns to Jensen Huang’s relationship with alleged Chinese spy
The stock is now down $9.20 (-4.93%) at $177.44 in very early pre-market trade.
Previously:
