Justice Department running three investigations that could sweep up Nvidia, Semafor reports, as Huang agrees to testify

Story So Far

The Justice Department is running three investigations that could sweep up Nvidia, Semafor reported on Thursday, hours after Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive of the chipmaker he co-founded. One inquiry examines Nvidia's own business practices on antitrust grounds; the other two focus on Megaspeed and Supermicro, the companies at the centre of the chip-smuggling allegations that engulfed Huang.

The two administration officials who described the inquiries to Semafor said the Megaspeed and Supermicro strands turn on Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive whom American officials suspect of spying for China and with whom Huang admitted having an extramarital affair before he stepped down. Supermicro shares fell about 11% in Thursday trading after the report, and Nvidia's own stock closed 4.3% lower. Huang has agreed to testify before Congress before Thanksgiving, the House Foreign Affairs chairman, Brian Mast, told reporters.

The investigations land on top of a week of fast-moving fallout. Nvidia's board hired the law firm Wachtell Lipton to examine the intelligence allegations, and chief financial officer Colette Kress is running the company on an interim basis while directors search for a permanent successor. Senator Michael Bennet wrote on Tuesday to four senior administration officials demanding an update on the Megaspeed inquiry, with answers due by 24 November. Nvidia reports quarterly results on 17 November.

Semafor's account rests on two unnamed administration officials, and neither Nvidia nor the Justice Department commented on it. The antitrust strand is not new: Reuters reported on 28 October that department officials were already asking about Nvidia's proposed $12.93 billion purchase of Hugging Face, as part of a conduct inquiry that began under the previous administration. What the new report adds is the count of three inquiries and their timing after Huang's departure, and Semafor was explicit that there is no indication prosecutors intend to charge Nvidia or Huang criminally at this time.

The distinction matters for what happens next. An antitrust inquiry tests whether Nvidia used its dominance in AI chips to shut rivals out; the export-control strands test whether its hardware reached China in defiance of American rules. Huang's testimony, rather than any filing, is the nearest dated event, and it will put the former chief executive under oath about both. For a company that dominates the market for the chips training the world's AI systems, the question is no longer only who runs it, but whether the way it built that position survives official scrutiny.

Supermicro has pushed back on being pulled into the Megaspeed strand, saying Megaspeed is not and has never been its customer. It has separately disclosed a grand jury subpoena covering its compliance programme and internal controls. Prosecutors in New York are separately examining whether organisations tied to Alice Huang diverted Super Micro hardware to China, according to CNBC's account of the matter.