Ex-Nvidia CEO misled top lawyer on affair with Chinese businesswoman, sources say

By Max A. Cherney and Jeffrey Dastin

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang misled several of the company's leaders, including general counsel Tim Teter and chief marketing officer Alison Wagonfeld, about the nature of his relationship with Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, with whom he had an affair, according to two people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence reviewed by Reuters.

Reuters reviewed several exchanges from October on condition of not quoting verbatim from the messages. The news agency is the first to report on this correspondence.

On Thursday, Huang resigned as Nvidia CEO, a spectacular fall from the chip industry's heights where he was a pioneer of technology central to the recent boom in artificial intelligence.

He apologized in a statement on Sunday for being unfaithful to his wife and for disappointing the company. His statement did not specifically name Alice Huang, a former top executive of Nvidia customer Megaspeed International, whom the US was investigating for potentially spying for China. Jensen Huang and Alice Huang share a last name but are not related.

The New York Times earlier this week reported Huang also had an extramarital relationship with an Nvidia employee, and Reuters reported on Thursday that Huang had another intimate relationship with a different Nvidia employee.

Teter did not respond to a request for comment. Wagonfeld did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative for ex-CEO Huang and an Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment. A phone call and email to contact information listed on a business card for Alice Huang went unanswered.

During the autumn of 2025 and in October 2026, in response to press queries that drew some Nvidia leaders' attention to his relationship with Megaspeed and Alice Huang, Huang at both times described their interactions as appropriate, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Reuters only reviewed messages from the exchanges in October, not the ones from 2025.

In two separate messages in October, Huang told Nvidia leaders, including Teter and Wagonfeld, that the interactions reflected standard business dealings with customers. In other messages, Huang affirmed the routine nature of his interactions with Megaspeed.

Nvidia's Huang also discussed taking legal action against the New York Times after it published an article in October of last year that drew attention to his meetings in public with Alice Huang, the people said.

That article had prompted Jensen Huang to communicate with some Nvidia leaders in 2025 about their interactions, which he did not describe as an affair, the people said. Ultimately, neither Nvidia nor Huang filed a lawsuit against the paper. A spokesperson for the New York Times said the paper received no legal demand.

It is unclear when his relationship with Alice Huang became intimate. Photos posted online and verified by Reuters show them together in the US, China and elsewhere, dating as far back as December 2023.

On November 10, the independent members of Nvidia's board said they hired Wall Street law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct an independent investigation after the New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported on Huang's relations with Alice Huang, as well as US authorities' suspicions that she was spying for China. Beijing has denied she is a spy.

Reuters has not independently verified whether Alice Huang was working on behalf of the Chinese government.

Jensen Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg published on October 29 that the US government had not informed him about its suspicions regarding Alice Huang.

Nvidia's stock has fallen more than 30% since its October 6 closing high, erasing more than $1.8 trillion from its market capitalization.