Nvidia Shares Slide in Premarket Trading After Board Opens Investigation Into CEO Jensen Huang’s Relationship With Alleged Chinese Spy

Shares of Nvidia fell roughly 4% to 5% in premarket trading on Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, after the chipmaker said its board had opened an independent investigation tied to reports that Chief Executive Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. The decline came on a morning when most U.S. stock futures were higher.

What Nvidia said

According to CNBC, Huang told Nvidia staff in an email on Sunday that he had an affair with a woman identified in reports as Alice Huang, who is unrelated to him, and that the board had launched an inquiry. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry,” he wrote. In the same message, he said he had “fallen short” of his responsibility to colleagues, the board, partners and shareholders, CNBC reported.

The Nvidia board said in a statement that it has no reason to believe either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, but that its inquiry “will examine all available information.” A company spokesperson said Huang is committed to continuing as CEO without interruption, and the company said he fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it. The BBC reported that Huang also wrote he is committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America’s national security.

The reports behind the probe

The New York Times reported last month that Huang had a relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive of Singapore-based Megaspeed, whom U.S. authorities investigated and concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset, according to Reuters. CNBC said reports in the Times and the Financial Times describe U.S. intelligence agencies as concerned that she passed information to Beijing. Megaspeed is an Nvidia customer that has been accused of helping restricted Chinese companies acquire Nvidia AI chips; Nvidia representatives previously said the company had already been investigated for evading export controls, CNBC reported. Reuters said Alice Huang did not respond to the Times last month and that it could not determine her location to seek comment.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun rejected the allegations on Monday, calling the “so-called Chinese spy narrative” a groundless accusation, slander and a smear, according to Reuters.

Share-price moves

CNBC said Nvidia was down about 4.8% in premarket trading late Monday morning Eastern time. Axios reported shares were off 4.4% as of 5:15 a.m. ET, a move it calculated would equal a loss of about $199 billion in market value in regular trading, and noted that the stock had already lost 13% of its value through Friday since the initial reports that the U.S. government was concerned about the relationship. Reuters said Nvidia shares tumbled more than 6% in Frankfurt, extending last week’s selloff to fresh multi-month lows, which at that level implied a loss of about $270 billion from Friday’s close according to LSEG Datastream.

Other chip stocks were mixed. Barchart said an exchange-traded fund tracking semiconductor shares fluctuated in premarket trading, while Advanced Micro Devices rose more than 3% after Oppenheimer upgraded it to Outperform from Perform with a $600 price target. CNBC said Intel, Marvell, Qualcomm and Arm were each down more than 1% in premarket trading. In Asia, Reuters reported that TSMC shares jumped 6.5% and those of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix rose 2.9% and 4.7%, respectively, rebounding from last week’s selloff in AI-related stocks.

Reaction

Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives & Co. called the episode a “black eye moment” for Huang and said it could prompt congressional inquiries, according to Axios and CNBC. He told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” that talk of replacing Huang is “comedy” and that the matter does not alter his view that Nvidia remains two to three years ahead of China in AI chips. Joachim Klement of Panmure Liberum told CNBC the impact is currently contained to Nvidia, but that if Huang’s position were endangered, Nvidia might cut back support for other companies, which could spread to other semiconductor names.

President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters on Sunday, said he thinks Huang is “an honorable guy” and that he had not spoken to the CEO about the investigation, CNBC reported. Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire defended Huang in a post on X, which Elon Musk reshared.

Market context and what is next

The Nvidia news follows a volatile week for technology shares. CNBC said tech stocks were hit last week as investors reassessed the data-center build-out after Democrats won control of Congress. On Friday, Yahoo Finance reported, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.46% while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose 0.31% and 1.09%. Early Monday, Dow futures were up about 0.8%, S&P 500 futures about 0.4% and Nasdaq 100 futures about 0.2%, according to Yahoo Finance.

Nvidia is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings on Nov. 17 and to hold a major conference in Washington, D.C., at the end of the month, CNBC reported. This article reports market events and company statements and is not investment advice.