Nvidia's board investigates CEO Jensen Huang over ties to an alleged Chinese spy
Follow-up to Saturday Nov 7: Report: China recruited an exec to spy on Nvidia's CEORemember Saturday's token? The New York Times reported that China's Ministry of State Security recruited Alice Huang, an executive at a company called Megaspeed, to spy on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Now Nvidia's board has acted.
On Sunday, the board announced an independent investigation into the CEO's relationship with her. In a memo to employees, published on Nvidia's own site, Huang admitted an affair. 'I was unfaithful to my wife,' he wrote, and he apologized to his family and to staff. On Hacker News, the memo got 679 points and 728 comments, and the board statement 469 points.
Our sources do not say what the investigation will cover in detail, or how long it will take. Yale's Jeffrey Sonnenfeld told TechCrunch he thinks it is 'about a 50-50' whether Huang stays as CEO. That is one expert's estimate, not a decision.
Nvidia makes the chips that run most of today's AI, and those chips are at the heart of US export rules for China. When the head of that company is under investigation, the real question is who checks the people who control AI's most critical hardware. Here, at least, a board is doing it in public.
