For Mark Kistenmacher, a retail investor who has watched Nvidia grow into the most valuable chipmaker in the world, the past week has been a costly one. He is the lead shareholder in a new federal lawsuit accusing the company and its chief executive, Jensen Huang, of defrauding investors over the Chinese spying scandal now engulfing the $4.3tn (£3.2tn) firm. The suit was filed in federal court in San Jose, California, five minutes after the US stock market closed on Monday, the day Nvidia shares tumbled 4.3%, wiping roughly $190bn from the company’s market value.
At the center of the legal action is a deeply personal matter that has spilled into the open: Huang’s alleged affair with Alice Huang, a former executive of Singapore-based Megaspeed who is not related to him. According to the complaint, Nvidia and its chief executive misled shareholders by failing to disclose that the matter raised national security concerns and threatened the company’s reputation and business prospects. The New York Times reported on the alleged relationship last month, saying US authorities had concluded that Alice Huang was a Chinese intelligence asset.
The human fallout reaches beyond the courtroom and the trading floor. Huang told Nvidia’s employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife, though he did not disclose details of the alleged relationship. In an open letter posted on Nvidia’s website, he wrote: “I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America’s national security.”
Nvidia announced on Sunday that it was conducting an independent investigation into reports that Huang was the “target of a foreign intelligence effort”. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Meanwhile, the political dimension arrived on Monday, when Donald Trump said the FBI was investigating Huang’s affair over the alleged spying matter, while adding that he did not believe the executive had reason to worry. “I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he’ll be in good shape,” Trump said at a White House briefing. He also described a personal phone call with Huang that day. “I did speak to him today just to see if he’s feeling all right, how you’re doing,” Trump said. “He said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.”
For shareholders like Kistenmacher, the stakes are financial as well as reputational. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from the defendants, and it is common practice for shareholders to sue companies after unexpected share price declines. What distinguishes this case is the scale of the loss: a single day of trading erased roughly $190bn in value from a company that has become one of the world’s most prominent symbols of the artificial intelligence boom.
Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has led the California company through its rise to global dominance in chips, a trajectory that made him a household name in technology and finance alike. That personal story, once a source of the company’s appeal to investors, is now the subject of federal scrutiny and shareholder litigation. Further background on the case and the allegations surrounding Huang can be found in The Guardian’s coverage at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/nov/10/nvidia-jensen-huang-sued-donald-trump-fbi.
The complaint, filed in San Jose, frames the nondisclosure as a direct harm to people who put their money into the company on the strength of its leadership and governance. Whether the courts agree will take time to resolve. For now, the employees who heard Huang’s admission, the investors counting their losses, and the company itself are left waiting on the outcome of an independent investigation that Nvidia says is already underway. Reuters contributed to this report.