As Jensen Huang’s affair with Chinese executive Alice Huang, who is suspected of working as a spy for Beijing, threatens his position at Nvidia, reports claim that the two were introduced by a Chinese businessman he’d known for a decade, Kang Wei. At the time, Kang happens to be Alice Huang’s husband, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The exact timeline of their meeting remains a mystery, but The Information, in its investigation, found that Kang met Jensen Huang during the 2010s, when Nvidia was primarily a PC gaming GPU manufacturer. According to the report, Wei was a private equity investor focusing on video game companies back then, while Alice Huang was pursuing a career in journalism.
Citing acquaintances close to Kang Wei and Alice Huang, The Wall Street Journal reported that Kang appeared to tolerate his wife’s romantic relationship with Jensen Huang for about two years and even openly spoke about their closeness.
He reportedly introduced his wife as Jensen Huang’s personal secretary in a half-joking manner, sources said.
About The Couple
Kang, who is reportedly in his early 50s, used to be a star fund manager in China before he founded his own company called Shanghai Hexi in 2010.
Alice Huang, who is now in her late 40s, reportedly had a master’s degree in media management from Hong Kong Baptist University in the late 2000s and worked as a television presenter in China before becoming involved in artificial intelligence, data centres and computer chips.
It remains unclear when the couple met, but Shanghai Hexi became central to their business-fuelled relationship. They started co-running the firm in 2016, WSJ reported, citing corporate-registry records.
Kang, who appeared on some US records alongside Alice Huang, was fined 400,000 yuan ($60,000) in 2018 by China’s securities regulator over financial misconduct, while his company, Shanghai Hexi, was fined 17.7 million yuan ($2.7 million).
How The Couple Leveraged Their Ties
According to reports, Kang and Alice Huang leveraged their personal connections to further an array of business ventures in China, Singapore, Taiwan and elsewhere.
“Over the past decade, Kang and Alice Huang hopscotched from one lucrative opportunity to the next — videogame companies, pharmaceutical takeovers and cloud computing — each time weaving a web of related entities, transferring stakes among themselves and capitalising on whatever connections were at hand,” said people familiar with the couple’s business dealings told WSJ.
Nvidia’s AI chips were reportedly the latest play for a couple with a track record of riding hot trades and, on occasion, running afoul of regulators.
