Huang hired crisis PR firm a year before affair went public

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang brought on crisis-communications firm Heller Inc. at least a year before he went public, over the weekend, with an affair involving a woman U.S. officials suspect spied for China, according to Wired. Heller’s founder, Risa Heller, has guided prominent men through personal scandals and misconduct accusations, according to a 2023 New York Magazine profile that counted Anthony Weiner, the former congressman; Mario Batali, the celebrity chef; and Jeffrey Toobin, once a New Yorker writer, among her past clients.

Wired also reported that Nvidia’s internal communications staff were instructed to copy Heller Inc. on media questions concerning Huang right after The New York Times published an October 2025 piece asking whether Nvidia was helping Chinese firms dodge U.S. chip export rules. That piece said Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data-center firm with China links that was obscure at the time, had purchased close to $2 billion in Nvidia chips, and pictured Megaspeed CEO Alice Huang, the woman later tied to Jensen Huang, standing near him during a Taipei event for Nvidia customers. Neither Heller nor Nvidia immediately responded to requests for comment.

On Sunday, Nvidia published a statement in which Huang acknowledged the affair, though without naming Alice Huang, and the board separately announced an independent investigation, citing reports that Huang “has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”

Why it matters

The timeline suggests Nvidia anticipated a personal-conduct crisis around Huang well before the China-espionage allegations surfaced, raising questions about how much the company’s leadership knew — and when — about the risks swirling around its CEO’s ties to Megaspeed.