Republican Senator Kevin Cramer, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, has publicly urged Jensen Huang to resign as chief executive of Nvidia in the wake of reporting that the executive had an extramarital relationship with a Chinese businesswoman alleged to have ties to Beijing’s intelligence services.
Speaking to Politico late on Tuesday, Cramer framed the situation as a national security concern, saying the potential for coercion was significant where sensitive technology is involved. He said:
"The potential for extortion is so tremendous that something as sensitive as Nvidia chips, I just think he’s got to go," Cramer told Politico. "If the worst thing he did in real life is infidelity with this woman who may or may not be a Chinese spy - but she might be - that’s enough, because whatever else there is, we don’t know. And to me, that’s a security risk."
The call for resignation follows a New York Times report that the Nvidia CEO had an affair with the businesswoman who is suspected by U.S. security services of being a Chinese intelligence asset. That report prompted Nvidia’s board to open an investigation into the matter, according to disclosures from the company.
President Donald Trump said on Monday that the FBI was also looking into Huang’s relationship with the woman. Trump said he had spoken with Huang, and that the CEO told him he had no idea the woman was a spy; Trump added that he believed Huang.
China’s foreign ministry has dismissed the allegations, calling them "groundless" and "a smear." Nvidia has responded by saying its board has found no reason to believe that U.S. national security or company secrets have been compromised and that Huang has agreed to cooperate with the internal review.
Huang has acknowledged to Nvidia employees that he was unfaithful to his wife, though he has not provided additional details about the nature of the relationship.
The matter arrives amid heightened scrutiny of chip exports to China. Over the past two years, Huang has been an active presence in Washington while Nvidia sought to sell advanced chips to the Chinese market. He has also been described as one of President Trump’s close allies in Silicon Valley and has publicly voiced support for the Trump administration’s agenda. At the same time, Democratic lawmakers have pushed for tighter restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductor technology to China.
The episode has spurred questions from lawmakers and regulators about whether personal relationships could create vulnerabilities around access to critical technology, and has prompted both an internal corporate review at Nvidia and attention from federal authorities.