A shareholder is suing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his company for misleading investors over his affair with a suspected Chinese spy.
In a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in San Jose, California, on Monday, Mark Kistenmacher, a shareholder, says Huang did not disclose his relationship with Alice Huang, per TechCrunch. Huang is a former top executive at the Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed that buys chips from Nvidia and is not related to Jensen Huang.
The lawsuit also says the company’s misleading statements “artificially inflated” Nvidia’s share price and raised national security concerns.
“As a result of [Nvidia and Huang’s] wrongful acts and omissions, and the precipitous decline in the market value of the Company’s securities, Plaintiff and other Class members have suffered significant losses and damages,” according to the lawsuit filed by the Rosen Law Firm.
Nvidia’s board announced Sunday that it had launched an investigation into the affair, with The New York Times reporting that U.S. intelligence officials had evidence she was “feeding information directly to Beijing.”
As one of America’s leading tech companies, the allegations carry national security implications because the technology Nvidia develops is so strategically important that the United States restricts its sale to China.
Trump, who has a close relationship with the tech titan, defended Huang and confirmed the FBI was involved.
“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 surprise press briefing. “He said, ‘I had no idea that she was a spy,’ and I really, and I really believe him.”
Huang admitted Sunday that he had been unfaithful to his wife and said he would cooperate with the investigation, but did not directly address allegations that the affair was part of a honeypot operation.
“I owe my family and all of you an apology,” Huang said in a statement. “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.”
Last month, Huang told Bloomberg that his relationship with Alice Huang was “related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual.”
Huang has been married to his wife, Lori, since 1985. The two met as lab partners in an electrical engineering class at Oregon State University and married five years later, according to the university’s College of Engineering website. Their two children, Madison and Spencer, both work at Nvidia.
Nvidia shares fell more than 4% on Monday following the allegations, and the lawsuit was filed shortly after the markets closed.
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