Nvidia Faces $400 Billion Two-Day Wipeout Over CEO Affair Allegations

Nvidia is on track to lose roughly $400 billion in market value in two trading sessions, after a report alleged that CEO Jensen Huang's relationship with a Chinese businesswoman helped move at least $7.5 billion worth of Nvidia chips to Chinese firms.

Shares fell more than 5 percent on Tuesday, extending Monday's 4.3 percent drop, when the company shed $192.08 billion in market value. Tuesday's decline puts another roughly $221 billion at risk if the losses hold through the close.

The report, published Tuesday by The Information and citing two people who know the woman, centers on Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman alleged to be a spy for Beijing. Alice Huang and Jensen Huang are not related.

The stakes are hard to overstate. Nvidia is the central supplier of chips powering the global AI buildout, and its stock has become a proxy for investor confidence in that entire spending cycle. Allegations touching export controls and foreign intelligence turn a personal scandal into a governance and national-security story — the kind that regulators in Washington watch closely.

What exactly does the report allege?

The core claim is about chip shipments. According to The Information, Alice Huang's relationship with Jensen Huang helped facilitate shipments of at least $7.5 billion worth of Nvidia chips to Chinese firms.

The mechanics, as described in the report, run through a corporate network:

• Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, built a network of companies across China and Singapore together with her husband and sister to acquire Nvidia chips.
• The hub was Shanghai Century Litong, a China-based company that secured preferred cloud partner status with Nvidia in 2023, giving it priority access to Nvidia's chips.
• When orders for chips subject to U.S. export restrictions stalled, Alice Huang used ties to Nvidia and its distributors to secure supplies anyway.
• The network helped move about 240,000 H100, H200 and some A100 chips into China — including chips barred from sale there.

Century Litong rented out computing capacity and operated data centers using Nvidia chips, some of which cannot legally be sold to China, the report said. Some of those chips ultimately served Alibaba, Tencent and smaller Chinese AI labs.

Alice Huang also held an executive position at Singapore-registered Megaspeed, a company linked to Century Litong. U.S. authorities have investigated Megaspeed over Nvidia chip shipments from Southeast Asia into China, The Information reported.

The report adds a detail that speaks to intent: Alice Huang allegedly leveraged her relationship with Jensen Huang to bolster her credibility, while keeping her role deliberately vague and avoiding a paper trail.

In short, the allegations describe a supply channel that routed restricted AI hardware into China while leaving minimal documentation.

How has Nvidia responded?

Nvidia's board opened an internal investigation on Sunday, according to the source material. Separately, the FBI is examining whether the 63-year-old Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation — a framing that, if substantiated, would recast Huang as a victim rather than a willing participant.

Huang has told employees he was unfaithful to his wife but provided no details about the relationship.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Alibaba, Tencent, Megaspeed and Shanghai Century Litong were not immediately available for comment outside regular business hours. Reuters said it could not independently verify The Information's report.

That caveat matters. The market is moving on a single outlet's reporting, attributed to anonymous sources, and the companies involved have yet to answer publicly.

Why is the market reaction this severe?

Two anxieties are stacking on top of each other. The first is Nvidia-specific: governance, export-control compliance and the company's heavy dependence on Huang himself. Nvidia has long been run with Huang as its unmistakable center of gravity — founder, CEO and public face. Any story that puts his judgment in question hits harder at Nvidia than it would at a company with more distributed leadership.

The second anxiety is broader. Investors were already uneasy about whether massive spending on AI infrastructure will deliver adequate returns. A governance crisis at the sector's dominant chip supplier gives that unease a concrete trigger.

Bank of America analysts put the dividing line plainly in a note: "The investment debate is whether this remains company-specific or triggers restrictions and disruption across AI infrastructure." They added: "We would not equate allegations with proven business damage."

That is the question hanging over the next few weeks. If U.S. authorities conclude that restricted Nvidia chips flowed into China through a channel connected to the CEO himself, Washington's response could tighten export enforcement in ways that reach well beyond one company.

What happens next?

Watch three things: the board's internal investigation, the FBI's counterintelligence review, and whether Nvidia or the named Chinese companies break their silence. Until then, the roughly $400 billion in paper losses rest on allegations that Reuters has not verified — and on how much investors trust the system around the man who built Nvidia.