Nvidia’s $350B wobble turns AI chips into the market’s favorite plot twist

Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation on November 8, 2026, following reports that CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, will oversee the inquiry. “While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board’s inquiry will examine all available information,” the company said. The board also “has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team,” while Huang agreed to cooperate with the review.

The investigation followed a Financial Times report that cited a U.S. government memo written earlier this year. The document said Huang had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a Chinese citizen and executive at Singapore-based Nvidia customer Megaspeed. According to people familiar with the memo, U.S. intelligence believes she was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security. Huang did not name the person involved in the email he sent to employees on Sunday, and Nvidia declined to comment on the memo to the FT. Nvidia later told The New York Times that Huang’s interactions with Ms. Huang were “not unusual or unexpected” and that customers such as Megaspeed receive “ordinary business information.”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun rejected the allegations during a regular press briefing Monday. “The so-called Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated. It’s just smears against China,” Guo said. China’s embassy in Washington also called the allegations “groundless smears and slanders.” Megaspeed retained outside counsel for an internal investigation. U.S. officials had suspected that the company was helping Chinese businesses circumvent restrictions on advanced AI chips, and the Commerce Department’s investigation into Megaspeed was handed to the Justice Department. Trade records cited by The New York Times showed that Megaspeed’s sister company in Malaysia bought at least $4.8 billion worth of AI equipment containing Nvidia chips between June 2024 and February 2026.

Lawmakers from both parties sought answers. Republican leaders asked Huang to appear privately before the House China, foreign affairs and intelligence committees, while Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), who will chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from January, said, “Congress will investigate and get answers.” The FT report expanded on a New York Times investigation from the previous month that said surveillance of Huang Le had revealed a close relationship with Jensen Huang. President Donald Trump was briefed on the findings roughly a year ago and chose not to act on them, according to The Times.

Nvidia shares fell about 5% in premarket trading and plunged as much as 8% on Monday, briefly threatening to erase roughly $350 billion in market value. Approximately $430 billion was lost across November 9 and 10, while the company’s market capitalization had already declined from roughly $5.78 trillion on October 6 to $4.51 trillion by November 6, according to YCharts. A November 6 snapshot placed Nvidia at 6.93% of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF; at that weight, a 5.6% decline alone would subtract approximately 0.39 percentage points from the S&P 500’s performance, assuming other holdings remained unchanged. The S&P 500 nevertheless rose 1.48% Monday morning, and the Nasdaq gained 1.87%.

Huang, 63, has led Nvidia since co-founding it in 1993. The export controls underlying the dispute began with tariffs introduced by President Donald Trump in 2018, followed by the placement of Huawei on a trade blacklist in 2019 and further semiconductor restrictions in 2020. On October 7, 2022, the Biden administration introduced export restrictions covering advanced computing chips and the equipment used to manufacture comparable processors in China. Restrictions intensified in 2023 and 2024, leaving Chinese technology companies dependent on Nvidia hardware that is difficult to obtain and domestic alternatives that are difficult to produce. ASML, a Dutch company, manufactures the extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV, machines used to print microscopic circuit patterns onto silicon. Nvidia separately unveiled the OpenShell Reference Architecture at GTC Berlin.