Trump knew about a spy next to Nvidia's chief and chose the stock
American agencies concluded a Singapore executive with direct access to Jensen Huang was reporting to Beijing, and the president, briefed roughly a year ago, did nothing. For Nvidia holders, the China reopening is a favor granted on market grounds, not a rule.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
American spy agencies concluded that Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a Chinese citizen and a top executive at a Singapore-based data center company, was funneling information to Beijing. Surveillance showed she had built a close relationship with Jensen Huang, Nvidia's−0.65% — Nvidia, down 0.65 percent today chief executive and, in one biographer's phrase, the president's most influential adviser on technology 13.
Roughly a year ago, President Trump was briefed on the findings and chose not to act, wary of disrupting Nvidia's chip sales and the stock market they lift, and of complicating the trade relationship with China 1. Nothing has followed in the day since the report landed: no company statement, no filing, no enforcement action 2.
The stock already runs without China
Nvidia closed at $215.38 on October 28, a $5.2 trillion market cap at a trailing P/E of 27.2, on fiscal 2026 revenue of $215.9 billion, up 65.5%, with a 60.4% operating margin 2. That stock sits just above the $211 short line flagged against the whole market last week (Sam Kovacs sold Nvidia short at $211; a weekly close below $200 is his line for the whole market, October 26) 2.
The China base has already eroded: Nvidia holds 34% of that AI chip market against Huawei's 28% (Nvidia falls to 34% of China's AI chip market as Huawei takes 28%, October 13) 3. The machine does not need China: sales of the H200 chip there ran under 1% of data center revenue in the most recent quarter 3.
Nvidia's quarterly revenue more than tripled while China stayed near zero
Data
| Revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q1 '24 | $26B |
| Q2 '24 | $30B |
| Q3 '24 | $35.1B |
| Q4 '24 | $39.3B |
| Q1 '25 | $44.1B |
| Q2 '25 | $46.7B |
| Q3 '25 | $57B |
| Q4 '25 | $68.1B |
| Q1 '26 | $81.6B |
| Q2 '26 | $96.2B |
So a reopening is upside, not the base. What the president's inaction protects is that upside, and the door is already open a crack: China is weighing letting Alibaba−0.94% — Alibaba, down 0.94 percent today and ByteDance buy Nvidia's RTX Pro 5500 chips, and ByteDance plans to order 1 million of them 3.
Every proven case is a box; this one is a person
The smuggling record is all boxes. Greg Lui, a California company owner, was charged on October 1 with sending $300 million of Nvidia servers to China through Singapore and Malaysia 46.
Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun, a former Super Micro−0.94% — Super Micro, down 0.94 percent today contractor, pleaded guilty on October 9 in a $2.5 billion diversion scheme, more than $510 million of it in three weeks 5. The case the Times describes moves through people instead: an intelligence channel to the one figure with the most knowledge of where Nvidia's chips go 1, next to procurement records that show hundreds of requests for Nvidia AI chips from Chinese military entities since 2019, by one outlet's count 2.
The case for shrugging has real numbers
The espionage findings are classified and sourced to anonymous officials, and the provable dollars are small: about $2.8 billion across both smuggling cases against $215.9 billion of annual revenue 45. Nvidia says it follows export rules and that less than 0.5% of its products are diverted, a company-claimed figure 26.
Washington has picked Nvidia before: Trump lifted H200 export controls after dinner with Huang at Mar-a-Lago, over objections from lawmakers and security experts 3.
What decides it now
Watch three things. Whether the White House answers a story that documents its own enforcement as a market decision. Whether Beijing approves the ByteDance order 3. Whether Huang, who snubbed a congressional invitation on smuggling 6, is summoned back. A policy exception a newspaper has now documented is not a rule. It is a favor, and favors get withdrawn.
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More about NVIDIA
NVDA · Fiscal Q2 2027Revenue rose 106% to $96.2B, 92.5% of it from Data Center, “driven by the ramp of our Blackwell Ultra infrastructure”. Gains on equity stakes of $7.8B lifted net income to $59.7B.
Show as a table
| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Revenue | $96.2B |
| Gross margin | 75.0% |
| Operating margin | 66.2% |
| Net income | $59.7B |
| Hyperscale | $48.7B |
| AI clouds & enterprise | $40.3B |
| Data Center | $89.0B |
| Edge Computing | $7.2B |
| Gross profit | $72.1B |
| Cost of revenue | $24.1B |
| Other income | $7.8B |
| Operating income | $63.7B |
| Operating expenses | $8.4B |
| Tax | $11.8B |
| R&D | $7.1B |
| SG&A | $1.4B |
