Nvidia Over the past two years, CEO Jensen Huang has forged an unparalleled relationship with President Donald Trump, giving him extraordinary access and influence over federal artificial intelligence policy as the company pushes for loosening restrictions on sales of advanced chips to China.
Now, revelations about Huang’s ties to suspected Chinese spies have put that carefully cultivated alliance under intense scrutiny, along with the millions of dollars he and other Nvidia executives have spent to expand their political influence in Washington.
The semiconductor maker has a near-inseparable relationship with co-founder and CEO Huang. During President Trump’s second term, Huang went from being a near unknown to the president to being part of a small group of executives accompanying him on Air Force One.
Nvidia has committed at least $26 million to Trump’s pet projects, including $25 million for the White House ballroom and $1 million for the 2025 inaugural fund. Documents obtained by The Washington Post say the company initially tried to keep social donations anonymous. The company’s ballroom pledge ties Apple as the largest publicly announced corporate contribution, the Post reported.
Those relationships have drawn new scrutiny from Democrats in Congress, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who pressed Huang in November 2025 about Nvidia’s social media donations and ties to the White House. Blumenthal issued another warning Thursday, while Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the likely next House Oversight Committee chairman, vowed to investigate corporate corruption if Democrats take control in January.
President Trump continued to defend Hwang on Sunday, calling him an “honorable man” and saying he had heard nothing to suggest wrongdoing. According to the New York Times, the president was briefed on the allegations of Chinese intelligence in October 2025, but chose not to take action. Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw a classified memo detailing the concerns this spring, the Times reported.
The president’s defense highlights how Mr. Huang has become one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent allies in the technology industry, repeatedly praising the president, attending White House events and accompanying him on a trip to China in May. President Trump is scheduled to return to China next week for a summit with other world leaders.
Congressional scrutiny of Fan intensified after the Times reported on October 29 that U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Alice Fan, a Chinese national who is an executive at Singapore-based cloud computing company MegaSpeed, had passed on information to the Chinese government and had “close ties” to Jensen Fan. The two Huangs are not related by blood.
House Republican committee leaders on Thursday asked Jensen Huang to sit in on a closed-door conference regarding his relationship with Alice Fan, saying recent reports “raise serious national security concerns regarding China’s access to sensitive U.S. technology and information.”
Jensen Huang acknowledged the affair and apologized in a statement to the company on Sunday. He also said that NVIDIA’s board of directors has “initiated an independent investigation,” which he supports and intends to cooperate with.
“I love our country and our company, and I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting our national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American,” the CEO said.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Nvidia stock price chart over 3 months.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York told CBS News on Monday morning that “high-level” Trump administration officials would lead a classified briefing for lawmakers later in the day. U.S. intelligence chiefs John Ratcliffe and Jay Clayton were scheduled to lead a classified briefing on Iran-related threats with top members of Congress, a government official told CNBC on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
Late Monday morning, the Times reported that the Commerce Department had been investigating MegaSpeed through August 2025, but the investigation was suddenly transferred to the Justice Department after lobbying from Nvidia’s general counsel on the matter.
“BIS conducts all enforcement operations strictly on the books,” Thomas Wachman, a spokesman for the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, said in a statement to CNBC.
The Department of Justice did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
“NVIDIA’s CEO just admitted to having ties to a suspected Chinese spy,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee and slated to chair the committee next year, posted on X on Monday morning. “Congress reconvenes today with legislation in place to prevent advanced AI chips from fueling China’s military.”
Mr. Huang’s access to President Trump coincided with a series of policy shifts that eased restrictions on Nvidia’s chip sales to China, a lucrative market the company has fought to preserve.
In April 2025, Huang attended a $1 million-per-person dinner at Mar-a-Lago, after which the administration temporarily suspended limits on NVIDIA’s H20 chip before imposing restrictions a few days later. After another meeting with President Trump in July, the administration reversed course and began approving sales to China.
In December 2025, days after another meeting with Mr. Huang, President Trump announced plans to allow exports of Nvidia’s more powerful H200 chips to approved Chinese customers. The Department of Commerce officially eased licensing restrictions the following month.
Fan continued to pressure Trump by accompanying him on a trip to China in 2026 as Nvidia battled efforts in Congress to tighten export controls.
But Nvidia’s success in Washington has not yet translated into unfettered access to China. The Chinese government has withheld approval for large-scale imports of the H200, with hundreds of thousands of chips awaiting shipment as of early November.
NVIDIA has also quietly stepped up its influence operations in Washington, spending a record $2.15 million on federal lobbying efforts in the third quarter, up 72% from the previous quarter and 10% from a year ago, according to company disclosures. The $4.69 million in lobbying expenses through September 2026 is roughly equivalent to the $4.97 million spent in all of 2025.
The company’s in-house lobbyists include alumni from major Republican and Democratic congressional offices, including Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who previously served as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In June, Nvidia hired former Obama Commerce Department official and Intel lobbying director Bruce Andrews to lead its Washington operations, and in August it launched its first employee-funded PAC. The PAC had raised more than $263,000 through September but had not yet endorsed a candidate, according to a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. The next disclosure is scheduled for December 3rd. Separately, two NVIDIA executives, Gavin Shelley, vice president of software, and Sandeep Madra, vice president of hardware, each donated $443,000 to the Republican National Committee on June 24.
The donations help show the depth of the relationship between Mr. Huang and Mr. Trump, as the $4.3 trillion technology giant Nvidia boosts the U.S. economy and gives it a decisive advantage over China in the race for AI supremacy.
They also raise further questions about the Trump administration’s response to U.S. intelligence agencies that allegedly revealed that the loyal and powerful Nvidia CEO had close ties to Chinese spies.
“Clearly, Nvidia needs to take significant steps in its operations, security, and policy advocacy to take national security concerns more seriously,” Chris McGuire, senior fellow for China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told XPost on Monday. “However, it is even more important that the Department of Commerce strengthens export controls to prevent something like this from happening again.”
“It is completely incomprehensible that we have known this information for months and yet have not taken even the most basic actions to protect our country, such as cutting off the purchase of AI chips from a company literally run by Chinese spies,” McGuire wrote.
