ジェンセンとハニーポット：NVIDIA CEOの不倫スキャンダルが問うもの

Holy smokes. Well, in a year of countless wild headlines about the AI industry, boy, is this one for the ages. Yes, we've been doing a lot of emergency podcasts on the show, but the news cycle just requires that we weigh in on these events. And we have one for you today. Jensen Wang, the CEO of NVIDIA, has admitted to an affair, cheating on his wife with somebody that the U.S. government believes was working with the Chinese government to pass information along to them in her role as a spy. Today, we're going to do a quick emergency episode. I'm here solo. It's Alex Kentrowitz. We will obviously be covering this later in the week, but I'm here to do a short episode to talk about what happened and what the implications are as we get the week started. Obviously, this week, this news is too big to let it go until Wednesday or Friday. So we're here talking about it right now. All right, let's go to the Wall Street Journal. NVIDIA's board investigates report that CEO was spying Target after a fair.

Nvidia's board said it's launching an investigation into reports that Jensen Wang has been the target of a foreign espionage effort after the CEO had a romantic relationship with an executive suspected of working for Chinese intelligence. U.S. officials last year concluded that Chinese citizen Alice Wang, no information, note no relation, been a top executive at Megaspeed International, was sharing information with the Chinese government while working with Nvidia to build data centers in Asia. And Wong apologized. This is Jensen. I'll call him Jensen in the rest of this episode and her Alice. So Jensen apologized to his staff Sunday for being unfaithful to his wife. I owe my family and all of you an apology. There's no excuse for what I did. The CEO and his wife, Lori Wong, have been married for about 40 years and have two adult children who work for NVIDIA. We'll get to this in a bit, but of course, it's not just an affair or a regular affair. Obviously, if the U.S. government suspects that Alice is working as a spy for Chinese intelligence,

then it's much more about what was shared and what's passed along than the infidelity itself. Of course, the infidelity is not great, but if it was just infidelity, it would be a much more minor story. A little bit about Alice Wong and Megaspeed. This is from CNBC. What is Megaspeed? Megaspeed sells services to the Asia-Pacific-based companies. that need large amounts of computing capacity, usually for AI projects, by selling access to computing resources hosted in data centers in Southeast Asia. It advertises itself as a core business partner of NVIDIA's computing power cloud, a business in the region allowing customers to rent computing power from NVIDIA GPUs, which are specialized chips designed to do many calculations at the same time, and of course have become central to the AI build-out. This was what Alice Wong was pitching. This is from the Financial Times. Alleged Chinese spy link to NVIDIA chief pitched AI chip deals to investors. The woman at the center of the NVIDIA spying scandal pitched an AI chips deal to China-based investors,

touting her ability to secure the U.S. company's coveted GPUs and her commercial relationship with Chinese tech giant Alibaba. In early 2025, Alice Wong and her business partner, Kang Wei, saw investment for a Southeast Asia data center project worth several hundred million dollars. The pair said they had no problem securing GPUs as a key pillar of the deal and cited Alibaba as a client of the project, according to one investor present. Okay, so a couple of things here. Obviously, Jensen met Alice in their dealings in terms of him trying to bring GPUs into China. This is not a surprise. No, this is surprising, right? Jensen has always been in favor of sending GPUs to China. He's always believed it's important for China to be on the U.S. system of AI infrastructure. It's been explained to me like this. Basically, if China is using U.S. AI infrastructure and advances are made on U.S. AI infrastructure,

U.S. companies will always have access to that infrastructure. If they move to different infrastructure and make advances on, let's say, Chinese chips from Huawei, and China restricts those chips to the United States, then the United States will not have access to that infrastructure potentially. So that's why Jensen has always said it's important for everybody to be on the U.S. system or GPUs. Of course, that means Jensen sells more GPUs because he's the one who's building them. But that's sort of beside the point. So obviously he made contact with this woman, Alice Wong, you know, seemingly in a normal course of events. Nothing really suspicious about how they met or the work they were doing. The only thing in this story that really goes wrong is they become close. They have an affair and it doesn't stop there. The fact that Xi has, according to U.S. government sources, had a connection with Chinese intelligence and was passing information along to them makes this a very big deal.

Because, of course, Jensen Wang is not only the CEO of the most important AI company in the United States and the world, for that matter. He's also a top confidant, an ally of President Trump, a top friend of President Trump. Remember, President Trump called him in the middle of a panel at the All In podcast. And so having somebody from your intelligence services or working for your intelligence services very close to him opens up all routes to understand not only the plans to build your chips, the policy discussions happening in the United States, but it's also just a good asset to have just in case you want to take that company down a peg. Okay, so this is the setup. It's a classic honeypot setup. I think we've been good on the show about talking about honeypots. It's one of the things we've covered, you know, both seriously and we've kind of enjoyed the concept a little bit over the past couple weeks.

But the bottom line is, if the reports are all true, it looks like Jensen fell right into a honeypot. So now that he has, the question is, what does it mean? There a tremendous amount of uncertainty around Jensen future and NVIDIA future and AI build future because we don really have situations like this where the leading executives in the most important companies end up in bed with adversarial nation spies, or at least we don't hear about it so often. So if that's what happened, there are going to be some issues. So a couple of things I want to share. First of all, just about Jensen. I don't think there's any executive as much of a single point of failure within an important company as Jensen Wang. Remember, he co-founded NVIDIA in 1993. He has about 60 direct reports, he said. And he has managed these relationships both with partners and competitors, buyers, and governments for a long time.

He's been central to the NVIDIA story. He believed that GPUs were going to be very important technology when a lot of people wouldn't give NVIDIA the time of day. And he is the center of that company. It is a Jensen company. And so any problem with Jensen is really a problem for NVIDIA, a big problem. And especially, you know, if he ends up being removed or he steps down as the leader of this company, some people have suggested they don't really understand how NVIDIA would continue. Now his children are working there, but I don't know if they're ready to take on his role. Now I do have a take about whether Wong will step down or be pushed out, but that will wait I think until the very end here. That'll be my punchline. So stick with me a little bit as I try to point out the most important issues here and what might happen. So just to set the table here, I think it's important for anyone who says Jensen Wong's affair with Alice Wong

is just a simple affair or they're hoping for a simple affair the way that Bill Ackman suggested, I think they need to get their head checked. This is not just a simple affair. This is an affair with someone that the U.S. government believes was associated with Chinese intelligence services. They believe she was a spy, whether that's somebody who was hired directly by them or passing information along. It doesn't matter. This is someone who was compromised. And so was Jensen. Now, Jensen was as compromised as can be because when you have a secretive affair with somebody, they can hold it over your head. You put yourself in a position where they've got something on you, and then you're sort of – you're beholden in a way to their wants and interests. So I think those who believe that this was a simple affair, they simply aren't seeing the full picture. This is not a marriage issue. This is not a family issue, though it certainly is that. It's not that alone. It is a corporate security issue. It's a national security issue.

Now, you know, many people have said that this is not as big of a deal as people are making it out to be because Jensen, by definition, was going to be anti-export controls. He had been advocating to sell more to China as a matter of, of course, of business. And so, of course, like it's not like the government of China was going to cajole him into doing this with, you know, by setting him up with a member of intelligence. The writer Bill Bishop of cynicism disputes this, and I think he's totally right. Now, remember, Jensen is a text buddy of President Trump. Jensen is the keeper of a lot of super confidential design and information, you know, within NVIDIA. Here's what Bill writes. He says, and I think this is fair, was she ever alone with his phone or computer? Say when he got up to go to use the bathroom. Right. You have a guy who President Trump is calling mid-panel, probably texting him as well. In the bedroom, yeah, you get up, you go, you go use the bathroom, you go take a walk, you go, I don't know,

get something to eat from the fridge, there's all possibilities to compromise the security of the phone or the computer you leave behind. I'm not saying this happens, but the point is it didn't need to be Jensen's intent. It didn't need to be his, you know, express interest to share information he didn't want to share. When you're in a position like that, it can happen and you can't rule it out. And I think that's why when the board, the board had a very interesting quote about this. They said, effectively, we have no reason to believe that there's anything, you know, effectively that has been shared about NVIDIA or U.S. security interests illicitly. You can have no interest, no reason to believe that that stuff happened, but it could still have happened. And if it happened, it's a problem. So the culprit here could be sloppiness, not exactly, you know, explicit leaking from Jensen, you know, doing pillow talk and like saying, you know, hey, we're going to build these data centers here. Are these, you know, the U.S. is going to vote this way or that way.

There are so many different permutations of what could be shared. But I think that's important. Now, when we think about the immediate issues that are going to hit here, Jensen has been the most effective advocate against export controls to China in the United States. He has taken the gloves off. He's gone at it with people like Dario Amadei. We had Dario on my show last year, and Dario was very clear that he believed in export controls. This idea that Jensen had put forth that Dario wanted to control the industry, Dario hit back on very hard. I'm sure you've heard the criticism from people like Jensen who say, well, Dario thinks he's the only one who can build this safely. And therefore, speaking of that word control, wants to control the entire industry. I've never said anything like that. That's an outrageous lie. That's the most outrageous lie I've ever heard. So there have been relationships that Jensen has risked in order to push forward this idea that there shouldn't be export controls on GPUs.

and he has effectively been very successful on it. Last year, the Trump administration lifted a ban of selling NVIDIA's H200 chips to China. Now, there are some risks there. There have been some stories recently about how those chips have been sold to companies and people have visited their supposed offices or data centers and they been empty So effectively you can end up selling to an approved client and they can end up being funneled somewhere else So basically when you get those out in market they can be available to everybody. But Jensen has pushed for it. He's been successful on it. And NVIDIA has flourished as a result. NVIDIA, we woke up this morning, was a $4.5 trillion company. And who knows where it ends at the end of the day. But because it's been able to open up the market in China, that's been a big part of its growth. and, of course, the demand in the United States, right? So now it's very interesting.

Imagine Jensen Wang says something about export controls to China. Who can take him seriously? Seriously. Is anybody going to take Jensen seriously? If he says anything logical, right, if he makes an argument like he made on the Dwarkesh podcast about why people are overreacting about export controls, think anyone's going to be like, yeah, that makes sense and just take it on its merits? You know, even if none of the accusations, well, he already did admit that he was having the affair. But even if that's where it ends, it's hard to imagine that his voice on export controls is going to carry a tremendous amount of weight, at least for a little bit and maybe forever. And if further export controls are put in by the U.S. government, that's rough. It'll hurt NVIDIA's business. So that's definitely something to watch here. Now, speaking of the U.S. government, very interesting situation right now because Jensen's scandal could not have happened at a worse time frame.

Think about the situation in the United States. Not even a week ago, the Democrats swept to power in Congress, winning the House and the Senate. They did so on a number of messages against inflation, against cost of living, against the Iran war. But for anywhere between, let's say, 27% and 60% of people, AI data centers and the rise of AI was a crucial issue. We know this, and the Democrats have represented the fight against AI. They've been more anti-AI than the Republicans. Now, hearings were inevitable. We were going to see hearings. We've talked about that on the show. They were inevitable. Oh, goodness. Are they going to have a juicy first target? So think about it this way. The Democrats are going to come in. They're going to have an anti-AI agenda. They're going to try to look for some very prominent AI leaders to basically bring in front of their committees and publicly roast. Who is the first one? That was the question we had up until, I don't know, 24 hours ago. I believe the answer is clearly going to be Jensen Wang.

Think about this. He's high profile. He's basically the face of the AI buildup. He's a friend of Trump. He took taking phone calls from Trump in the middle of conferences. Yes, it would be, you know, it would be like as symbolic as it gets to get him up there and and beat him up over an issue that's going to be very, very difficult for him to defend himself on. So you could think about the staffers of the senators and members of Congress today that are already licking their chops, thinking about the YouTube clips and the ex-posts that they'll have where their bosses will get a chance to lay into Jensen for effectively, well, not even effectively, for, well, again, the language on this is hard, but for sleeping with somebody who the U.S. government believes is a spy for China. And now that I'm lying about it. Jensen, for instance, when he went to the, when him and a spokesperson went to the New Times in Bloomberg,

they said there was nothing unusual or unexpected about the relationship. Can you just imagine senators sitting up there and being like, you didn't know? You didn't know that you were being infiltrated this way? You said it was unusual. You said it wasn't unusual. You said it wasn't expected. What exactly did you find out? If you can't know that you're sleeping with someone who our government believes is a Chinese spy, how can you be trusted to protect any national security secret? Why should you have security clearance if you do? Why should your company be allowed to sell outside the United States if you have no idea what's going on in the world? Tough questions to answer. So stay tuned for the hearings in Washington. Now, beyond that, you know, one of the things that has interested me about this is why China would do it. It feels like a known goal to me a little bit. Remember, Jensen has been the top advocate for selling to China in the United States and the most effective.

So, you know, some people have said, well, he's been such a strong advocate because he's been bought off or because he's, you know, in this relationship with someone who represents China's interests. I don't believe that. I think Jensen just wanted to sell GPUs. I mean, seriously, when it comes down to who Jensen is, the desire to sell GPUs is probably front and center, is front and center. So this is the best possible explanation I was able to come up with for this situation, why China would do this. You have basically two, you're losing the AI war to the United States. You are. The open source Chinese models have made a lot of progress, But ultimately, it's the progress of the OpenAIs and the Anthropics built on NVIDIA chips and TPUs, which we'll get to in a moment, that have been driving what's going on here. So if you're China and you look at it and you get to send somebody to sort of work with your intelligence service and have an affair with Jensen, it's almost a win-win.

If you don't get caught, you could potentially get key information about U.S. semiconductor plans and more from Jensen. That's your opening, right? At least, I don't know. I would imagine Alice has a better chance than a reporter asking what his plans are or some public statement. So if you don't get caught, you potentially get that information. If you do get caught, you send the most important AI company in the United States, which is NVIDIA, into turmoil. And it gives you a chance to catch up. Maybe you learn something along the way. So don't get caught, win. Get caught, kind of a win. they got the latter. China does deny the accusations, but I guess what do you expect them to do? So that's my best explanation for that. Okay, very quickly, the winners here, I would say, they're Dario and Google. Again Dario has been asking for export control controls to China for years and that put him at odds with Jensen He going to be able to make his case in a much more righteous manner

and look at least much more authentic in terms of his concerns compared to Jensen, whose credibility will be harmed after this. And the other one, of course, is Google. Google is competing with NVIDIA on chips. Google has TPUs, and they are performing pretty well compared to NVIDIA's GPUs. Now, NVIDIA is still undoubtedly the leader here, but Google TPUs aren't to be underestimated. And look, I don't know if this timing was intentional or not, but today, Google announced two more versions of TPUs, two more variants, they call them. And one of them is meant for... The timing is unbelievable, this. One of them is meant for government work, and work in highly regulated industries so it can protect data. I mean, if you're a Google TPU salesperson and you see this happening with NVIDIA, you're making phone calls today and you're like, let's see if we can get you,

you know, at least to try out our chip, you know, and you know we're going to be here. We don't know what's going to happen with NVIDIA. That would be the sales pitch I would make if I was a Google TPU salesperson today. Although I'm sure with such valuable hardware, it's not exactly like your typical smile and dial. But anyway, those conversations are going to be interesting. All right, let's end here. Will Jensen stay on as NVIDIA CEO? So think about what Jensen has coming. He has this immediate wave of publicity. That's not fun. He has a board investigation. That's not fun, although many of the board are loyalists. He has coming hearings, most likely. Um, and the story is not over. More will trickle out. We're going to learn more. And so the question will be, you know, what, what, how much more and how bad it is. If you're looking just at the details, it's just crazy to, this is definitely one of those stories where I keep like remembering that this actually happened.

The CEO of NVIDIA, the world's largest producer of AI semiconductors, uh, or design, well, let's say producer, had an affair with a woman who is alleged to be working with Chinese intelligence. It's tough to say that this ends with him holding his job in a normal course of action. But one thing I've noticed about this AI story and the AI trade is it really doesn't matter what has come up here. And this is just an independent observation, not a rooting interest, none of that. But think about all the speed bumps and the stumbling blocks and the seemingly end to certain eras of AI. We've seen Sam Altman get fired and rehired. We've seen splits like the split from OpenAI from the Anthropoc people and the split from Elon Musk between OpenAI, the current OpenAI executives. So much drama. We've seen bad polling.

We've seen local opposition. You know, the moratoriums and the pauses and restrictions that were passed this past week in the midterms weren't the first. You know, there were already some ongoing. We've seen the supposed, like, wall of data, the fact that the progress in AI was supposed to top out. All this stuff has come up, but the technology has, in some way, it's become so powerful, it's improved so fast, And it's become in such high demand that none of this, none of it has slowed AI meaningfully. The notion of AI, you know, slowing down or the main players leaving their positions against their will, even Jensen, is tough to imagine right now. There's almost a feeling of inevitability and invincibility of AI progress and AI in general right now.

And it doesn't seem like the laws of physics apply to it in the same way they apply to every other industry and every other company and every other CEO. You know, not named Jensen Wong or Dario Amadei or Sam Altman. This is why, like on the show Friday, for instance, when we were talking about the vote, it's not that I was upset at the vote. Obviously, like my job is to analyze what happens. I simply, you know, wanted to go through the scenario where it wasn't as big of a disaster as a lot of people thought it was because the voting against AI, because we've seen time and again that AI has gotten past the stumbling blocks that were supposed to stop it. Now, what's happened with Jensen is the most serious, I would say, of any of these, of any of the above. Again, you just kind of, you say it out loud, the CEO of NVIDIA admitted to an affair and the person he was sleeping with is connected. According to the United States government, two Chinese spy agencies.

Just, I mean, is there, you know, you say that and you're like, is there any room for doubt? Is there any possibility that this is going to end well for Jensen? It doesn't seem like it on the surface, but again, given the history that we've seen, given the developments we've seen in the past couple of months, I think Jensen is going to make it through. I think Jensen is going to remain the CEO of NVIDIA no matter what comes out, no matter how painful the hearings. NVIDIA needs him. He needs NVIDIA. Of course, there's always a first. It's possible that there are some consequences here. But from what we've seen, if it follows the pattern, it's going to be the same as we've seen previously. So that's my bet. Jensen stays. The show goes on. Will he be a weakened Jensen? Undoubtedly. Will he potentially face greater export controls in competition? Maybe. But is this the end of Jensen and the end of NVIDIA?

I don't think so. I can't find a way to get there. And I could be wrong. And if so, I'll admit it. A lot of stuff is still going to happen. A lot will still come out. But for the time being, this is the story. All right. We'll have more later this week.