US President Donald Trump called Jensen Huang on Tuesday and urged Nvidia’s then-CEO to fight for his job.
Washington: President Donald Trump called Jensen Huang on Tuesday, before the Nvidia chief stepped down amid a rapidly unfolding spy scandal, and urged him to keep fighting for his job, according to two people briefed on the conversation.
The call was the latest instance of Trump defending and protecting Huang, who had become a high-profile ally and an influential adviser on artificial intelligence. The president continued to back him to the end, even after US intelligence agencies had concluded that Huang was having an affair with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy.
Nvidia announced Thursday that Huang, who built the company into the world’s leading supplier of advanced AI chips, had been replaced as CEO following revelations not just of the affair with the woman suspected of being a spy, but also another with one of his employees.
A representative for Huang did not provide a comment for this article. Neither Trump nor the White House responded to requests for comment about his call to Huang.
The president had been warned at least twice about Huang’s relationship with a Chinese citizen known as Alice Huang, whom intelligence agencies concluded had been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security, The New York Times has reported. The first warning was late last year, and the second was in the spring.
Trump took no action either time, and brought Huang with him on a trip to China in May. In recent days, he has publicly praised Jensen Huang and expressed sympathy for him, saying in a social media post on Thursday that he was a “legend.”
The president’s advisers said he was blasé about the national security implications when told of the intelligence community assessments related to Huang. One aide said that Trump saw the episode mainly through the lens of adultery, and that the president dismissed the idea of Huang’s entanglement posing a threat to the country.
