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US President Donald Trump has said the FBI is probing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s relationship with a woman accused of working for Chinese intelligence services.
Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump said law enforcement had began inquires following Huang’s admission that he engaged in an extramarital relationship with a Chinese executive named Alice Huang.
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“We’ll look into it. I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else,” Trump told reporters in a news conference.
“I think he will be in good shape.”
Trump said Huang told him earlier that he had “absolutely no idea” that the woman was an alleged intelligence agent.
“He said I had no idea that she was a spy, and I really believe him,” Trump said.
Asked by a reporter when he first became aware of concerns about the relationship, Trump said it was “not too long ago.”
“I have been hearing about it and I have been reading a little bit about it over a period of time,” the US president said.
Nvidia, which dominates the market for high-end chips used to power artificial intelligence, did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
Nvidia on Sunday announced that it had opened a probe into its CEO’s relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based data centre company Megaspeed, following media reports that cited US intelligence claiming she worked for China’s Ministry of State Security.
Nvidia’s board of directors said it had no reason to believe that national security or company secrets were compromised, but that an independent inquiry overseen by outside counsel would examine “all available information”.
In a separate statement admitting to an extramarital relationship, Huang apologised to his family, colleagues and shareholders, and pledged to cooperate fully with the board’s inquiry.
Huang’s admission came after the New York Times and the Financial Times last week reported that unnamed US officials had authored a memo alleging that he had been targeted by Alice Huang for intelligence-gathering activities.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday rejected the allegations, labelling the claims “entirely groundless, speculative and intended to smear and malign China.”
Alice Huang, who is no relation of Jensen Huang, has not publicly commented on the claims.
Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, California, is a critical player in the global AI race, controlling an estimated 80-90 percent of the market for graphics-processing units (GPUs) used to run frontier models.
Shares of Nvidia, currently the world’s second-most valuable company with a market capitalisation of more than $4.30 trillion, fell 4.27 percent on Monday to close at $178.67.
