SAN FRANCISCO — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made himself President Trump’s “very good friend” and lobbied the administration to loosen restrictions on AI chip sales to China while he was allegedly ensnared in a Chinese honeytrap, a timeline of his reported relationship with Alice Huang shows.
The $150 billion AI boss appeared in loved-up snaps with accused communist spy Alice Huang last year — and then weeks later personally pitched Trump at the White House on relaxing export restrictions for the company’s chips.
Huang missed Trump’s second inauguration, but then more than made up for it with a $25 million donation to the president’s ballroom project.
The 63-year-old appeared at a $1 million-per-person dinner at Mar-a-Lago in April 2025, where he pushed to lift chip restrictions that had just been imposed. There were at least three documented meetings between Trump and Huang where the administration responded with policy changes that made it easier for Nvidia to sell advanced chips to China.
China hawks have long pushed to restrict the most cutting edge chips from the communist regime in an attempt to blunt its technological advances and stymie its attempts to overtake the US on AI.
Huang, for his part, had lobbied and spoken out against restrictions since the Biden administration first imposed limits in 2022. Additionally, selling more chips to the world’s second largest economy could only help Nvidia’s bottom line.
But all the while, Huang — who has been married to college sweetheart Lori for more than 40 years — was meeting with 42-year-old Alice. In May 2025, they were spotted at dinner together during Taiwan’s top tech expo, where she looked at him adoringly and affectionately touched his arm as they sat with other tech honchos.
Alice Huang — a TV host, turned banker, turned executive at the Singapore-based AI computing company Megaspeed — met Jensen Huang (no relation) in early 2024, according to reports. Megaspeed has bought billions of dollars in chips from Nvidia for data centers in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
Separately, the firm — backed by Chinese tech giant Alibaba — is under investigation for allegedly smuggling chips to China. The US government is probing reports that 50,000 chips sold to Megaspeed were seemingly missing following an audit.
Here’s the latest on the Nvidia CEO’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy:
- Trader warned of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s ‘uncomfortably close’ relationship with alleged Chinese spy Alice Huang months ago
- Alleged Chinese spy Alice Huang boasted about Nvidia AI chip access — as US officials grew concerned about smuggling
- Chinese ‘spy’ Alice Huang stares longingly at Nvidia boss, affectionately clasps arm in newly-obtained pics
- Nvidia stock plunges 5% after CEO Jensen Huang admits to affair with alleged Chinese spy
Nvidia reportedly intervened in that probe, according to Bloomberg.
The Chinese government denies allegations of a honeypot spy scheme. Megaspeed also denies allegations of wrongdoing.
Trump himself has downplayed Huang’s admission of infidelity and Nvidia’s board said the company, which has no succession plan for replacing Huang, had full confidence in him, even as it announced it was investigating the claims.
On Monday, Trump said he called to check on Huang after he admitted cheating on his wife and apologized to his family.
“I did speak to him today just to see if he’s feeling all right,” Trump said at the White House.
“He said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy. I asked him that question. Did you have any idea that she was a spy? He said I had no idea that she was a spy, and I really believe him.”
The president and the Nvidia “have become good friends,” a source close to them told The Post.
Huang has made himself an integral part of the US economy. Nvidia reached a historic $5.5 trillion in valuation in May 2026, beating out Apple at the time as the most valuable public company in the entire world. It is both the world’s most important chipmaker, and the locus around which the AI boom spins. It uses the profits from its sales to help fund AI companies building out data centers, spurring further demand for its products.
By some accounts the AI boom is expected to account for up to 4% of all US economic activity this year, and Nvidia’s revenues alone up to 1%.
Trump personally hailed Nvidia’s latest quarter record sales of $96.2 billion in September, up 106% from last year.
Huang notably traveled with the president during his trip to China last May, with Trump even going as far as to personally invite the Nvidia boss to ride with him on Air Force One.
When Huang couldn’t make it to Washington DC in time for departure, he took his private plane to Alaska to join the president during his refueling stop in Anchorage.
Dressed in his signature black leather jacket and carrying only a backpack, Jensen boarded the presidential plane alone, without an entourage, pausing to speak with Trump’s son Eric, who was also on the trip, as he boarded.
Huang and his wife were seated at the head table with the president and first lady Melania Trump at the September state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump was personally involved in selecting the guest list for that dinner, a source familiar with the planning told The Post.
Along with the gains for his company, Huang’s relationship with Trump reportedly came with some perks of power.
Huang called the president when his invitation to the April state dinner for King Charles arrived without a plus one, according to a source. The billionaire CEO wanted to bring his wife to the dinner.
When White House staff told him there were no plus ones, he called Trump and made a personal appeal, getting Lori Huang on the list and bumping a senior administration official off of it to make room for her, multiple administration sources told The Post.
Huang has two grown children with his wife, Spencer and Madison, who both work in their father’s company.
The family has a $38 million home in San Francisco, with Nvidia spending nearly $4 million in fiscal 2026 on services for Huang that included home security, protection during personal travel, consulting and drivers, according to its May proxy filing.
Huang has remained close to Trump, literally, traveling to the Middle East for Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates in May 2025, then to London to join the president at Windsor Castle for a state dinner with King Charles that September.
Trump, at a meeting with then-British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during that visit, saw the CEO in the audience and teasingly told him: “You’re taking over the world Jensen. I don’t know what you’re doing here. I hope you’re right.”
He also had a prime seat at Trump’s side at the September 29th meeting on AI policy, alongside other technology executives. And the president awarded him the National Medal of Science last month.
Huang and Trump remained close friends despite the warning signs about the Nvidia boss’ relationship with Alice, which one tech company flagged to the Commerce Department last summer.
“The White House has known how suspicious Ms. Huang, and her corporate network, is since last summer,” a source familiar with the case told The Post. “And Jensen has repeatedly lied about his relationship with Ms. Huang.”
Culper Research also published a report titled “NVIDIA (NVDA): The China Problem” in May 2026, which specifically warned about the concerning rumors about Nvidia’s chief executive and Alice.
Alice had been under investigation since the Biden administration and believed to have been recruited as an asset for China’s feared Ministry of State Security.
The Commerce Department first flagged Alice following her sudden rise to the top of Megaspeed in 2023.
The concerns were troubling enough that Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on letting Huang attend the China state dinner with Trump, the source added.
Little is known about the alleged spy’s private life, but before entering the world of finance, Alice had worked as a reporter for CCTV, the national broadcaster of the Chinese state, and Hunan TV, a regional broadcaster in central China, according to her LinkedIn biography.
Local reports claimed Alice is married to former Shanghai Hexi chairman Kang Wei — a former business partner, whose firm was fined $2.7M and censured by the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
