SEOUL, South Korea — Taiwanese intelligence officers are investigating how Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy who had an affair with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, was able to visit the democratic island claimed by Beijing.
Taiwan, a central node in the global tech supply chain, is agog over allegations that Mr. Huang, perhaps the world’s highest-profile Taiwanese-American, was caught in a so-called honey trap.
After news broke in U.S. media, Mr. Huang admitted Monday that he had an extramarital affair with Ms. Huang. Her whereabouts are unknown, but Beijing has denied that she is a spy.
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U.S. agencies are concerned that Ms. Huang led Mr. Huang — the two are unrelated — to supply huge shipments of Nvidia’s AI chips to a Singapore firm and thence to China.
Nvidia’s Graphic Processing Units, or GPUs, are highly advanced microprocessors and a core engine of global AI. The bulk are made by Taiwan’s leading chip fabricator, TSMC, but some are made in TSMC’s Arizona plant.
Mr. Huang, the superstar tech CEO and co-founder of San Clara, California-based Nvidia, is noted for his charismatic presentation style and his love of leather jackets.
He was born in southern Taiwan in 1963, and moved to the U.S. at the age of 9, but maintains close ties with the island’s business community.
Questions were posed Tuesday in the Legislative Yuan as to how Ms. Huang, whose Chinese name is Huang Le, was able to enter Taiwan.
Taiwanese media have captured at least two of her visits to Taiwan with Mr. Huang since 2024, raising questions as to whether security and border agencies were aware of her, Taiwanese vernacular media Taiwan News reported Tuesday.
Following questions to the Cabinet by opposition legislator Lai Shyh-bao, Interior Minister Liu Shy-fang said security agencies are “actively investigating” the case, Taiwan News reported.
At the same session, Premier Cho Jung-tai said the government keeps entry records, but he declined to reveal how many times Ms. Huang visited Taiwan.
A detailed breakdown of the relationship between Mr. Huang and Ms. Huang was published in United News.
According to the newspaper, Ms. Huang attended the Taipei International Computer Show in June 2024 and socialized with Mr. Huang and local executives after hours in a whisky bar. She later posted on the Chinese social media platform WeChat a picture of a Taiwanese-made Kavalan whisky signed by Mr. Huang.
In May 2025, Taiwanese photographers spotted the couple dining together, with arms interlinked, at San Liu, a reservation-only eatery that serves upscale Cantonese and Shanghainese cuisine.
It is apparently a popular spot for Mr. Huang. According to Taiwanese newspaper Storm Media, he also dined there in May this year with the CEO and senior executives of TSMC.
The crown jewel of Taiwanese industry is its semiconductor sector, built around “fabs,” the plants that fabricate the world’s most advanced logic chips. TSMC is the leading company in the cluster.
Some were impressed that China allegedly used such a low-tech asset to penetrate Nvidia, a highly prized U.S. industrial asset that is central to Washington’s tech competition with Beijing.
“The U.S. government spent billions building a chip embargo and cyber fortress around Nvidia … you can spend billions locking down silicon wafers, export controls, and enterprise firewalls,” Tat Thang, an independent tech reporter, said Tuesday on social media. “Across 5,000 years of espionage, when encryption becomes unbreakable, the biggest zero-day vulnerability on the planet is still human biology.”
Nvidia’s board has stated that there is no indication Mr. Huang leaked any technological secrets.
Multiple investigations are underway.
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