House GOP Chairs Summon Nvidia's Huang Over Alleged Chinese Spy Ties

Three House Republican committee chairs have asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to sit for an in-person briefing on Nov. 18 about his dealings with a Chinese executive accused of gathering information for Beijing.

The letter, dated Wednesday and released Thursday, is signed by Reps. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) of Foreign Affairs, John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) of the Select Committee on China, and Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) of Intelligence. The date falls one day after Nvidia's scheduled third-quarter earnings report.

The lawmakers want details on Huang's interactions with Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen and executive at Megaspeed, as well as Nvidia's safeguards against foreign espionage. "China's access to that sensitive U.S. tech is core to the investigative work of our three committees this Congress," they wrote. They said Congress must determine whether U.S. national security was put at risk.

The letter follows a New York Times report, as cited by Fox Business. According to that report, Alice Huang allegedly collected information for Beijing and built a close relationship with Jensen Huang. U.S. officials initially did not believe he knew of her alleged intelligence work, and it is unclear whether that assessment has changed. Officials also suspect some chips Megaspeed acquired may have been smuggled into China.

The report also says President Trump was briefed on the intelligence about a year ago and chose not to act. Huang has not received a defensive briefing from the government, the report says.

Huang has lobbied the administration to loosen limits on chip sales to China, and he joined Trump's business delegation to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this year. Nvidia did not immediately respond to Fox Business, and it is unclear whether Huang will attend.

The oversight itself is the point: Republican chairs are asking hard questions about a major American company's China exposure, with their own president's team in the room as context.