Nvidia is opening an investigation into reports that CEO Jensen Huang was the "target of a foreign intelligence effort", the company’s board of directors said Sunday.
The announcement came after Huang acknowledged to the board that he had been intimate with a business executive whom US intelligence determined was gathering information for Beijing, The New York Times reported.
Huang apologised in a message to the company, according to the Times. "I was unfaithful to my wife," he said. "My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry."
Nvidia's board said in a statement it had "no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised", but that its inquiry would examine all available information.
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Huang "fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it", the board said.
Huang, 63, will remain CEO during the investigation.
The Times reported US intelligence agencies had discovered last month that Huang had developed a close relationship with Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and chip buyer, and determined that she was feeding information directly to Beijing. The two were not related, according to the Times.
Alice Huang was previously a television reporter in China before becoming a top executive at Singapore-based data centre company Megaspeed, which has become one of Nvidia’s biggest customers in Southeast Asia. Megaspeed bought more than US$4.8 billion ($8.62 billion) worth of Nvidia chips over the past two years, according to the Times
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