By Heekyong Yang, Kyu-seok Shim and Tom Westbrook
SEOUL/SYDNEY, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Nvidia shares declined on Monday after an internal investigation into whether CEO Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort put his future at the AI chipmaker under scrutiny.
The internal probe followed a media report that Huang had a close relationship with a Chinese businesswoman who allegedly passed information to Beijing. Huang told Nvidia's employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife,
without disclosing details of the relationship.
The investigation, announced on Sunday, has put a spotlight on 63-year-old Huang's future given Nvidia's status as the world's most valuable chipmaker and the CEO's role as the most prolific salesman of the AI boom.
The leather-jacketed Huang enjoys rock-star status worldwide, particularly in Asia, where he often mingles freely with fans, taking selfies and signing autographs for his devoted followers.
He is Nvidia's fifth-largest shareholder with a roughly 3.6% stake, according to LSEG data, and keeps a tight grip on the company through an unusually flat structure in which dozens of executives report directly to him.
But unlike Meta Platforms or SpaceX, Nvidia has no dual-class shares that would give its co-founder majority voting control.
The fallout of the probe extended to South Korea, where Madison Huang, Huang's daughter and an Nvidia executive, canceled a planned visit to Seoul for an Nvidia conference that was set to begin on Monday, according to companies she had been scheduled to meet.
Nvidia's shares pared losses from an 8% slide to now down 6%, extending last week's selloff and pushing the stock to fresh multi-month lows. At current levels, the chipmaker would lose more than $280 billion in value from its last closing price.
The chipmaker said its board has confidence in Huang. Analysts acknowledged uncertainty around succession, but most do not expect the investigation to result in the longtime CEO stepping down.
"The key-person risk is massive since Jensen co-founded Nvidia, built the CUDA ecosystem that underpins its competitive advantage and personally anchors relationships with the largest AI customers and governments," said Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities.
The New York Times reported last month that Huang had a relationship with Alice Huang, an unrelated former executive of Singapore-based company Megaspeed, who US authorities investigated and concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset.
"The so-called Chinese spy narrative is purely a groundless accusation, slander, and a smear," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters in Beijing.
Megaspeed did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Monday, a public holiday in Singapore.
Alice Huang did not respond to the New York Times last month when it first reported her relationship with Huang, and Reuters could not determine her location to seek comment on Monday.
ASIA PARTNERS UNAFFECTED
Shares in Nvidia's key Asian chip suppliers rebounded on Monday after last week's selloff of AI-related stocks, with TSMC closing 4.7% higher, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix ending 0.6% and 0.4% higher, respectively.
Some prominent figures weighed in on Huang's admission. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, said on X the Nvidia CEO was an "incredible human", but if "indeed this is more than an affair, then it is obviously a real problem".
"I am hoping for a simple affair, not a risk to our national security," he said.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk commented, "I agree", on a post by Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire that said Huang "did something incredibly dumb" that was "bad for America" but that "Jensen is irreplaceable for America's AI leadership".
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he had not spoken to Huang about the allegations, but called him a fine person. "I hope everything's fine. He's done such an incredible job," he added.
When asked if he believed he should have acted on intelligence when he was briefed about it, Trump said: "No, I don't think so. I think he's an honorable guy. I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to hear it."
The New York Times reported that Trump was briefed about the intelligence findings roughly a year ago and chose not to do anything with the information.
CANCELED VISIT
Madison Huang had initially planned to visit South Korean AI startup Rebellions and hold a question-and-answer session with Kakao Mobility. Rebellions said the events were canceled due to "unavoidable internal circumstances at Nvidia."
Nvidia AI Day Seoul, a two-day event expected to draw about 2,000 participants to discuss physical AI, agentic AI and infrastructure, will proceed as planned, according to South Korean media. Nvidia did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Analysts said a prolonged investigation or internal review could potentially delay Nvidia's investment decisions or product launches, with broader implications for the semiconductor industry.
Ryu Young-ho, a senior analyst at NH Investment & Securities, said Nvidia's rivals, including Advanced Micro Devices, could attract greater attention in the short term, potentially putting Samsung, which has close business ties with AMD, in the spotlight.
Still, he said Nvidia's products would be difficult to replace, limiting the potential impact, although shipments to China could face further delays depending on how the situation developed.
South Korea's deputy science minister said on Monday the government expected no disruptions to contracted deliveries of Nvidia graphics processing units despite issues currently facing the company.
(Reporting by Kyu-seok Shim and Heekyong Yang in Seoul, Tom Westbrook in Sydney, Roger Tung and Ben Blanchard in Taipei, Danilo Masoni in Milan and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Writing by Brenda Goh; Editing by Ed Davies, Jamie Freed and Arun Koyyur)
