Alice Huang connected to Nvidia’s Chinese competitor Huawei

Alleged Chinese spy Alice Huang may have owned stakes in businesses in China that benefited Nvidia’s biggest competitor in China, Huawei, at the same time that she was in business with Nvidia and also reportedly having a romantic affair with its ousted CEO Jensen Huang.

The connection between Alice Huang and Huawei was first discovered by analysts at private intelligence firm Tesari. The firm exclusively shared its findings with CNBC. Tesari, which uses artificial intelligence to collect evidence and specializes in national security investigations around the world, provides intelligence research to private companies and the U.S. government.

This previously unreported entanglement may raise questions about Alice Huang’s intent and conduct in her relationship with the CEO and whether Jensen Huang knew his romantic partner was closely connected with his competition. Jensen Huang has acknowledged having an affair, though the precise timing of his relationship with Alice Huang is unknown.

The mysterious saga of Alice Huang involves a tangle of interlocking corporations and transactions that show her connection to entities that ultimately provided computing power to Huawei in China. 

Huawei is known as a Chinese government “state champion” in the technology and telecommunications sectors, meaning it receives enormous financial support from the government in Beijing so it can lower prices and undercut global competitors. It is considered a key part of the Chinese government’s push for global technical dominance and is closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

Businesses connected to Alice Huang were linked with supplying Nvidia computing power to Huawei, according to documents reviewed by CNBC, around the same time she and Jensen Huang were first publicly seen together, in December 2023.

In 2024, Nvidia said Huawei was a top competitor, specifically in artificial intelligence chips including graphics processing units, central processing units and networking chips.

“This activity, which surfaced through our analysis of Alice’s network, warrants a national security and [technology] counterproliferation investigation,” said Brian Andersen, Tesari’s vice president for national security applications and a former supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations.

If the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry Security and Homeland Security Investigations found evidence that anyone transferred “controlled equipment” to Huawei without authorization, potential charges might include export-control violations, conspiracy and smuggling, Andersen said.

The connection between Alice Huang and Huawei is so convoluted that analysts at Tesari told CNBC that based on their previous investigative experience, they suspect it was designed to deliberately obscure the relationship.

Nvidia and Huawei did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment. Jensen Huang did not respond to a voicemail left on a mobile phone. Alice Huang could…