Despite denial, Trump was told on trip to China about spying on Nvidia leader

President Donald Trump was told aboard Air Force One in May en route to China that the United States had obtained sensitive intelligence showing that Nvidia’s CEO was in a relationship with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The message was delivered by Marco Rubio, his secretary of state and national security adviser, shortly before the Nvidia leader, Jensen Huang, joined the presidential trip to Beijing at Trump’s invitation. It marked at least the second time in seven months that the president had been told of intelligence about Huang’s involvement with the woman.

The existence of the previously unreported update given to Trump contradicts the president’s assertion Monday that he had not known at the time of the trip about Huang’s relationship with the woman, who U.S. officials had concluded was working for China’s Ministry of State Security.

“No, I didn’t hear about it then,” Trump said when asked at a news conference whether he knew about Huang’s ties to the woman when he headed to a summit meeting with Xi Jinping, China’s leader.

The disclosures about the relationship have rocked the company and driven down its stock price. They have focused new attention on the intensity of the competition between China and the United States for supremacy in artificial intelligence — a rivalry in which Nvidia’s advanced chips are integral to the current American advantage. And they have put a new spotlight on Huang’s influence with Trump and the administration on AI policy and issues affecting Nvidia.

Ever since U.S. officials first warned him last year that a woman having an affair with Huang was believed to be working for Chinese intelligence, Trump has played down or dismissed the concerns. When first briefed on the issue late last fall, Trump chose to take no action, the New York Times reported last month.

When pressed on Monday about whether he had received a briefing on the issue last year, Trump, who has embraced Nvidia as key to U.S. technology competitiveness and a driver of the stock market’s rise over the past several years, said he would have to check.

“I’d certainly check with the intelligence people,” he said. “They could have been mentioned. Certainly, it didn’t make much of an impact on me.”

Trump is scheduled to visit China again next week. He initially indicated he might invite Huang again, but on Monday, he said the Nvidia executive will not accompany him on the trip.

But the president continued to vigorously defend Huang, saying he had spoken to him and asked him if he knew that the woman, known as Alice Huang, was a spy. Jensen Huang said he did not, Trump said. The president said he did not plan to raise the matter with Xi when he meets the Chinese leader next week.

“I just know Jensen very well,” Trump said Monday. “I just think he’s a very honorable man.”

Trump’s previous trip to China, in May, has come under new scrutiny since the disclosures about the Nvidia leader’s relationship with Alice Huang, who had been an executive at a Singapore-based company called Megaspeed that purchases advanced Nvidia chips. The United States began restricting sales of advanced chips directly to China in late 2022, but it still allows Chinese companies to rent that computing power at data centers in Southeast Asia, like the ones Megaspeed operates.

In the weeks before the trip, Rubio had overseen the drafting of a memo about Jensen Huang, which was circulated to a small number of top administration officials. It was not intended for Trump, according to one person with knowledge of the matter, and it was not shown to him aboard Air Force One.

Huang, among the most pivotal figures in AI, was initially left off the invitation list of business and tech leaders traveling to China in May, a fact that generated headlines before Trump departed the United States. With little warning, Trump invited Huang to meet up with Air Force One during a refueling stop in Alaska. Rubio was among more than a dozen administration officials on Air Force One for the trip.

A U.S. government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, confirmed that when Rubio learned that Huang would be joining the trip in Alaska, he “briefed the president on the issue.”

Trump was not particularly moved by what he heard from his national security adviser and continued with the plan to pick up Huang, the people with knowledge of the events said.

Huang, once aboard Air Force One, saw the president “very briefly” but “remained in the separate part of the plane for almost all of the trip,” the official said.

The State Department declined to comment. Asked to comment, the White House press office declined to do so on the record. Instead, the office emailed a statement on background that pointed to Trump’s remarks from Monday. The email disputed the reporting for this article, without elaborating.

After the Times reported last month that U.S. officials had determined that Alice Huang was a Chinese intelligence asset and that she was in a relationship with Jensen Huang, Nvidia executives and Jensen Huang insisted that the relationship was a routine engagement with a customer. On Sunday, Jensen Huang admitted to a romantic relationship with Alice Huang. Soon after, Nvidia announced that the company would conduct an independent investigation.

Jensen Huang has long favored a more expansive policy on chip sales, well before Trump returned to the White House in 2025. His defenders have often noted that he has publicly said the U.S. must lead China in the AI race. Trump has largely sided with Huang and other technology executives and investors, amid a growing divide about the global risks of AI.

Earlier this year, at an investor conference, Huang reiterated that China should not be able to access Nvidia’s top-tier products, and that the United States should have “the first, the most and the best.” But, he added, “simultaneously, all American companies should compete globally.”

It was unclear whether the Rubio memo from last spring played a role in Huang having been excluded from the initial invitation list for the subsequent China visit.

At the time, the president was considering opening sales to China of Nvidia’s most advanced Blackwell chip. Huang, along with some other major tech leaders, has supported such a move, although many of Trump’s advisers opposed it. The administration has not approved the sale of Blackwell chips to China, although the U.S. government ultimately permitted the sale of less advanced H200 chips to approved purchasers.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.