Nvidia shares plunged on Monday after an internal investigation into whether CEO Jensen Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort put his future at the AI chip maker under scrutiny. The internal investigation followed a media report that Huang had a close relationship with a Chinese businesswoman who allegedly passed information to Beijing. Huang told Nvidia employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife, without revealing details of the relationship. The investigation, announced Sunday, has cast a spotlight on Huang’s future, given Nvidia’s status as the world’s most valuable chipmaker and the CEO’s role as the most prolific marketer of the AI boom. his devoted followers. He is Nvidia’s fifth-largest shareholder with a stake of about 3.6 percent, according to LSEG data, and maintains tight control of the company through an unusually flat structure in which dozens of executives report directly to him. But unlike Meta Platforms or SpaceX, Nvidia does not have dual-class shares that would give its co-founder majority voting control. How did Nvidia become worth billions?: Nvidia’s spectacular rise to $3 billion | About thatNvidia has had a spectacular increase. So how is it possible that a company that creates graphics chips is now worth $3 trillion? Andrew Chang explains Nvidia’s huge bet and how it created an entirely new industry that could change the world. Fallout from the investigation spread to South Korea, where Madison Huang, Huang’s daughter and an Nvidia executive, canceled a planned visit to Seoul for an Nvidia conference that was set to begin Monday, according to the companies she was scheduled to meet with. minima. At current levels, the chipmaker would lose around $250 billion in value from its last closing price. “The market is probably telling you now that this is not doing the stock any favors at a time when there is a lot of speculation about data center construction,” said Chris Weston, head of research at brokerage Pepperstone in Melbourne, Australia. But Weston said he did not believe Huang, whom he described as the “godfather of AI,” would be replaced. “I really thought I was going to resign… the stock would fall – it would be an absolute bloodbath, to be honest,” he said. Nvidia said its board has confidence in Huang. Some analysts said he has no natural successor within the company should he decide to step down. The New York Times reported last month that Huang was in a relationship with Alice Huang, an unrelated former executive at the Singapore-based company Megaspeed, whom U.S. authorities investigated and concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset. “The so-called Chinese espionage narrative is purely a baseless accusation, slander and slander,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told reporters in Beijing. obtained on Monday shows a woman identified by Reuters as Alice Huang, after comparison with a separately obtained photograph, attending a dinner with Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang at a restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 22, 2025. (CTI/Reuters) Megaspeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, a public holiday in Singapore. Alice Huang did not respond to the New York Times last month when it first reported on her relationship with Huang, and Reuters was unable to determine her location for comment on Monday. Shares of top Asian chip suppliers Nvidia rebounded on Monday after last week’s sell-off in AI-related stocks, with TSMC closing up 4.7 percent, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix ended up gaining 0.6 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively. Some prominent figures influenced Huang’s admission. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, said on “I hope it is a simple adventure, not a risk to our national security,” he said. Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented, “I agree,” on a post by Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire that said Huang “did something incredibly dumb” that was “Bad for America,” but that “Jensen is irreplaceable for US AI leadership.” US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he had not spoken to Huang about the allegations, but called him a good person. “I hope everything is fine. He has done an incredible job,” he added. Asked if he believed he should have acted on the intelligence when he was briefed about it, Trump said: “No, I don’t think so. I think he’s an honorable guy. I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to listen to it.” The New York Times reported that Trump was briefed on the intelligence findings about a year ago and decided to do nothing with the information. Canceled visit to Madison Huang Initially planned to visit South Korean artificial intelligence startup Rebellions and hold a Q&A session with Kakao Mobility. Rebellions said the events were canceled due to “unavoidable internal circumstances at Nvidia.” Nvidia AI Day Seoul, a two-day event expected to draw about 2,000 participants to discuss physical AI, agent AI and infrastructure, will go ahead as planned, according to South Korean media. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Analysts said a prolonged investigation or internal review could delay Nvidia’s investment decisions or product launches, with broader implications for the semiconductor industry. Ryu Young-ho, senior analyst at NH Investment & Securities, said Nvidia’s rivals, including Advanced Micro Devices, could attract more attention in the near term, potentially putting Samsung, which has close business ties with AMD, in the spotlight. Still, he said Nvidia products would be difficult to replace, limiting the potential impact, although shipments to China could face further delays depending on how the situation developed. South Korea’s vice science minister said Monday that the government did not expect disruptions to contracted deliveries of Nvidia graphics processing units despite the problems the company is currently facing.
