Nvidia board opens probe after report of foreign intelligence effort targeting Huang

Nvidia board opens probe after report of foreign intelligence effort targeting Huang

Live•Nov 10, 08:30 PM•2 min read•
Anna Kowalski
Anna Kowalski

Nvidia’s board will open an independent investigation into a reported foreign intelligence effort targeting CEO Jensen Huang, first reported by Ft. Huang acknowledged an affair in an internal message; people familiar with a US intelligence-based memo said it linked him to a Megaspeed executive whom US intelligence believed had been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security.

A committee of independent directors, assisted by external lawyers, will oversee the inquiry. The board’s statement pairs its current view with an open inquiry: it says there is no reason to believe national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, while pledging to examine all available information.

Huang apologized to his family and colleagues in the message to employees and said he would fully cooperate with the inquiry. Nvidia had previously dismissed suggestions of an improper relationship with Alice Huang, describing their interactions as “nothing unusual or unexpected” when dealing with an Nvidia customer.

Alice Huang is an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based Nvidia customer. The US government was already investigating Megaspeed over concerns that it was smuggling Nvidia chips into China.

Huang has repeatedly lobbied President Donald Trump for a more permissive approach to shipping Nvidia’s AI chips to China after new export controls in 2025 cut the company off from the market. Trump later allowed exports of Nvidia’s older-generation H200 chips under a deal that gave the US government a cut of sales, but it had minimal impact on Nvidia’s sales as Beijing pushed back against the technology.

Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993, and the company’s success is more closely tied to him than that of most technology groups. He leads a close core team of about half a dozen executives while directly managing dozens of reports.

Trump said he did not regret not acting on the intelligence and described Huang as honorable. Nvidia’s Frankfurt-listed shares were down more than 6 percent in early trading Monday.

John Moolenaar, the Republican head of the House China committee, and other lawmakers have requested that Huang testify before Congress about China’s access to sensitive technology and information.

Boston Dynamics tests Atlas control with a wheeled setup

Boston Dynamics has fitted wheels to its Atlas humanoid for a set of controls engineering experiments, first reported by Therobotreport. The experiment tests how the combined control approach supports dynamic stability as Atlas moves across unstructured, real-world terrain, shifting between rolling on flat ground and legged motion over obstacles or irregular surfaces.

Boston Dynamics describes a wheeled Atlas as a research testbed, not a product. Controls engineer Andy Wu attached wheels to Atlas’ legs to push actuation to its limits; the experiment also examines adaptability in conditions that are difficult to model or simulate.

Wu said a custom adapter mounts an off-the-shelf scooter rim onto Atlas’ existing ankle actuator and is the only new part in the build. On the software side, each wheel is modeled as an ankle that can spin continuously, replacing the feet in Atlas’ baseline robot model.

The system learned all of the behaviors in simulation and executed them in real life, with surprising accuracy, Wu said. The video also shows Atlas performing pirouettes and aggressive actuation maneuvers, alongside rolling and legged movement.

The whole-body reinforcement-learning policy processes real-time proprioceptive feedback and velocity commands. Separately, the experiment outputs dynamic pose and force adjustments to mitigate unmodeled disturbances and non-ideal contact states.

For Wu and the controls engineering team, the main takeaway is control synergy: classical motor control provides baseline stability, while whole-body reinforcement learning supports reactive adaptation. The combination yields greater real-world agility than either method alone.

Wu’s next question is how the policy will respond to failed actuators. That matters for safety and for understanding how the system will respond to a system failure.