Nvidia's board said Sunday that it is opening an independent investigation "in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort."

A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside independent counsel, will oversee the inquiry, the board said in a statement. The board said it "has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised," and that the review will examine all available information. Huang supports the review and has committed to cooperate, according to the statement. The board said it has confidence in him and will provide updates.

The report behind the review

The investigation follows reporting by The New York Times last month that Huang had a relationship with Alice Huang, who is not related to him, a former executive of Singapore-based Megaspeed. U.S. authorities investigated her and concluded she was a Chinese intelligence asset, the Times reported. Reuters said it could not independently verify the claims.

Megaspeed is a Singapore cloud company and an Nvidia customer. The United States has been investigating it on suspicion that it helped Beijing gain access to advanced chips barred from export, according to Reuters. Megaspeed did not respond to requests for comment. Alice Huang did not respond to the Times.

China rejected the account. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called the "Chinese spy narrative" "purely a groundless accusation, slander, and a smear."

Washington's response

Senior House Republicans have sought briefings from Huang, citing national-security concerns, Reuters reported. President Donald Trump said Sunday he had not spoken to Huang about the allegations. He called Huang "a fine person" and "an honorable guy," according to Reuters. The Times reported that Trump was briefed on the intelligence findings roughly a year ago.

The market price

Nvidia shares were down about 4.5 to 5 percent in U.S. premarket trading at 6:39 a.m. ET Monday, Reuters reported. A decline of that size, Reuters calculated, would remove about $250 billion of market value from Friday's close. Reuters describes Nvidia as the world's second most valuable company.

The probe lands on a sector that was already falling. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index had its biggest weekly loss since March 2025 last week, Reuters reported.

Huang's daughter, Madison Huang, an Nvidia executive, canceled a planned visit to Seoul tied to an Nvidia conference, according to Reuters. Nvidia AI Day Seoul was expected to go ahead.

Where the business link runs

The board's inquiry is a governance review. Its link to revenue runs through export controls, and analysts disagree on how much weight that link carries.

Citi's Atif Malik pointed to governance implications, regulatory scrutiny and the export-control compliance of H200 chips flowing into China, Reuters reported. He put that flow at under 1 percent of Nvidia's data-center sales. The sales exposure is small. The scrutiny is the part he flagged.

Ryu Young-ho of NH Investment & Securities took the other side. The U.S. government had been aware of the matter for months, he said, so the immediate impact was unlikely to be significant.

Nvidia's next earnings report, due Nov. 17, is the next real test, one analyst told Reuters.