China has warned the US against using the controversy surrounding Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and his affair with a Chinese businesswoman suspected by US intelligence of links to Beijing as a pretext for tighter curbs on Nvidia’s advanced AI chips.

The Nvidia CEO’s reported affair with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive whom US suspect of links to Chinese intelligence, has raised national security concerns and questions over the future of Nvidia and the AI industry at large.

“The US should stop fabricating the so-called Chinese spy narrative as a pretext for imposing technology restrictions,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a press briefing on Thursday, November 12.

“China’s scientific progress relies on independent innovation and open cooperation,” she added.

The comments come as Chinese AI companies look to secure Nvidia-powered computing capacity outside China, fearing that the controversy over Huang could push Washington to close a loophole allowing them to remotely access restricted US chips.

A major Chinese cloud provider has internally discussed locking in overseas Nvidia chip capacity, while some companies have approached data-centre operators about reserving computing power, Reuters reported. Smaller AI labs are also considering similar moves, including through providers in Southeast Asia.

The concern centres on the Remote Access Security Act, or RASA, a US bill that would give the Commerce Department authority to regulate remote, cloud-based access to restricted technology.

Washington already restricts exporting Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to CHina over national security concerns. These have been tightened several times in the last couple of years to keep China from gaining access to cutting-edge computing power that could support advanced AI and military applications.

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