Justice Department has not concluded Alice Huang was a Chinese spy

By Sophie Lindqvist

The FBI has examined Alice Huang’s relationship with the Chinese government for at least one year. On Thursday, Nov. 12, Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department had reached no conclusion about whether the former executive of Nvidia customer Megaspeed acted as a Chinese spy.

What has the Justice Department established?

Blanche said: “There are no conclusions reached by the Department of Justice, or by me, or by FBI Director Patel around who she is or is not.” He rejected a reporter’s premise because it assumed a finding he had never made and did not know to be true. Reuters summarized the position in its Nov. 13 market report as the department saying it does not know whether she was a spy.

That matters because early reports described Huang as someone U.S. intelligence officials suspected of gathering information for Beijing, and lawmakers and officials later repeated that description. Blanche put the department on record without resolving the underlying intelligence dispute. His statement does not clear Huang.

What does the intelligence evidence show?

Multiple sources told CNN that the intelligence collected on Huang to date does not prove she was spying for Beijing. U.S. officials also disagree over the strength of evidence that China’s Ministry of State Security recruited her to spy on Jensen Huang and, through him, on U.S. policymakers.

Some Office of the Director of National Intelligence officials, including people close to Director Jay Clayton, called the spy characterization inaccurate and over-torqued. CIA officials remain unconvinced that intercepted communications show Huang knowingly passed information to Beijing.

Other Trump officials see the risk differently. They told CNN that Huang’s not acting for the Chinese government strains credulity. Some believe her access to Jensen Huang, and by extension Trump, created a clear counterintelligence risk even if she had not yet passed anything on.

U.S. intelligence obtained communications that appeared to point to someone close to Jensen Huang and Nvidia as the source of information reaching Chinese intelligence streams, according to one person familiar with the investigation. The report did not identify that person and did not establish that the source was Huang.

President Donald Trump also declined to resolve the issue. Asked by commentator Stephen A. Smith whether Jensen Huang was right to step down, Trump said: “Was the woman a spy? And I don’t know if that’s been determined yet.” He added that a spy finding would change the answer, while a not-spy finding might lead to a different one.

The dispute sits at the center of the scandal that ended Jensen Huang’s tenure as Nvidia’s chief executive. China’s foreign ministry called the allegations groundless speculation and an attempt to smear and malign China. No charges have been announced against Huang.

The FBI runs the main counterintelligence investigation, and it continues. Last year, the bureau told lawmakers it was suspicious of Huang’s shift from Chinese state television journalist to businesswoman with unusually large purchasing power.

Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Politico that he left a classified briefing that week still unsure of the nature of her relationship with the Chinese government. His uncertainty matches the split among intelligence officials, but it does not settle the case.

What remains under investigation?

The Justice and Commerce departments began investigating Singapore-based Megaspeed in 2024. The case formed part of a broader probe of foreign shell companies suspected of diverting restricted Nvidia chips to China, a person briefed on the investigation told CNN. Megaspeed denied wrongdoing.

Blanche said he had no concerns about Commerce’s handling of the Megaspeed case and described a good relationship with the department. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Friday that Commerce had primary responsibility for the delayed blacklisting.

Other Justice Department threads remain unchanged. Bloomberg reported on Nov. 12 that federal prosecutors in Manhattan were examining whether entities linked to Huang helped divert Super Micro Computer hardware to China. Those threads include the Megaspeed inquiry and an antitrust probe aimed at Nvidia, according to Semafor.

Super Micro has said Megaspeed is not and has never been its customer. None of these inquiries has produced charges.

Commerce’s delayed Megaspeed blacklisting decision is the next commercial test: it bears directly on controls for restricted Nvidia-chip diversion, while no charges yet establish liability for Huang, Megaspeed or Super Micro.