Huang hired a crisis PR agency a year before admitting to an affair with a suspected spy

PR agency was hired before the admission

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hired the crisis communications firm Heller Inc. at least a year before he publicly admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman suspected of spying for China, Wired reported (TechCrunch cites Wired in its coverage). The agency's founder, Risa Heller, according to a 2023 New York Magazine profile, advised prominent men caught up in personal scandals and sexual harassment allegations; her past clients reportedly included former congressman Anthony Weiner, celebrity chef Mario Batali, and former New Yorker journalist Jeffrey Toobin.

Connection to the chip export investigation

Wired also reported that Nvidia's internal communications team was instructed to copy Heller Inc. on press inquiries about Huang shortly after the October 2025 publication of a New York Times article examining whether Nvidia helps Chinese companies circumvent American export restrictions on chips. At the time, the Times wrote that Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company that had previously been little known and had ties to China, had purchased nearly $2 billion worth of Nvidia chips; the article also described Megaspeed CEO Alice Huang — the very woman later linked to Jensen Huang — standing beside him at an Nvidia client meeting in Taipei.

The admission and the board's investigation

On Sunday, Nvidia published a statement from Huang in which he admitted to the affair with a former Megaspeed top executive, without naming Alice Huang. The company's board of directors separately announced an independent investigation,citing reports that Huang had 'become the target of a foreign intelligence operation.' Heller and Nvidia did not promptly respond to requests for comment.