Nvidia’s board was preparing to push out chief executive Jensen Huang, CBS News reported Thursday, citing two people familiar with the matter. The trigger was an allegation that Huang had an affair with a woman whom American spy agencies suspect worked for Beijing. CBS later added a note saying Huang resigned, as the board announced; this piece covers the allegations and the pressure that led there.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report the board’s plans. Nvidia shares fell more than 8% in after-hours trading Wednesday, extending a sell-off that had already run for days. The two sources told CBS the Trump administration knows about the situation.

The allegations center on Alice Huang, who is not related to Jensen Huang. A week earlier, The New York Times reported that she previously led Megaspeed International, a Singapore-based firm that bought billions of dollars of Nvidia chips and hardware, and that U.S. intelligence has believed for months she was recruited by the Ministry of State Security, China’s spy agency. Bloomberg reported Wednesday night, relying on unnamed people briefed on the situation, that she has returned to China. One of its sources said she lives in Beijing with the knowledge of Chinese security officials.

Beijing rejects the framing. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called the “so-called Chinese spy narrative” baseless slander, and colleague Mao Ning said she had no information on the Bloomberg report.

What Huang himself has said is narrow. In a weekend message to employees, he wrote that he was “unfaithful to my wife” and apologized to her and their children. CBS does not report that he admitted knowing the woman was an intelligence asset. According to President Trump, Huang told him he had “absolutely no idea” the person was a spy.

The board responded Sunday by commissioning an outside probe of claims that Huang “has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.” It said it saw no sign that trade secrets or national security had been damaged. Spokesperson John Rizzo added that Nvidia would expect the U.S. government to have warned it of any genuine threat.

The Times also reported Thursday, citing five people who worked at Nvidia, that Huang had a second affair, with Kimberly Powell, a Nvidia vice president responsible for health care who reports to him. Both are married to other people. Huang, Powell and Nvidia have not commented on that report, which CBS has not independently confirmed.

The commercial exposure runs through Megaspeed. CBS spoke with two law enforcement sources who say the Justice Department is investigating the firm over possible violations of U.S. export limits on advanced AI chips. Megaspeed denies involvement in illegal transfers and says it hired a U.S. law firm to verify its compliance. Nvidia also faces a securities lawsuit accusing it of withholding information from shareholders about Huang’s ties to the alleged spy.

The politics are tangled. Huang is close to the Trump administration, which let Nvidia sell its H200 chips to approved customers in China late last year in exchange for a 25% cut of sales. Blackwell and Rubin systems were excluded from that deal.

Nvidia’s designs underpin much of the AI industry, so a leadership fight tied to export enforcement is a supply-chain risk, not a gossip item. Buyers with multi-year Nvidia commitments should expect the Justice Department inquiry and the law-firm review to shape China sales rules long after the executive question is settled.

Reported by CBS News on November 12, 2026.