Jensen Huang has agreed to testify before congressional investigators without a subpoena, days after resigning as Nvidia's chairman and CEO. His exit doesn't close the file. It widens it.

Three Republican House committee chairs—Reps. Brian Mast, John Moolenaar and Rick Crawford—requested his testimony in a November 4 letter, more than a week before his resignation became public. Mast told reporters Thursday his committee still wanted to hear from Huang, and that staff had been in contact with Huang's team as recently as Wednesday night. That same day, Bloomberg and NBC News reported Huang had agreed to appear. The hearing will be closed-door, and the timing is still under discussion.

What started the scandal?

An October 29 New York Times investigation examined Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a company U.S. intelligence had suspected for more than a year of collaborating with the Chinese government and funneling trade-restricted AI chips to Chinese labs. Lawmakers want to know whether she also gave Beijing access to trade secrets and sensitive national security information—and what officials knew about the risk.

"Recent reports raise significant national security concerns regarding the PRC's (People's Republic of China) access to sensitive U.S. technology and information," the three chairmen wrote. "It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which U.S. national security has been placed at risk."

How far does this reach into the White House?

The scrutiny now extends past Huang and Nvidia to the Trump administration itself. On November 11, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller demanding the administration preserve documents on:

• Nvidia's chip exports and the suspected intelligence operation
• An intelligence memorandum reportedly circulated to senior officials before Trump's May 2026 visit to China
• Communications between Huang and Trump, and discussions of chip export restrictions
• The government's handling of its investigation into Megaspeed

The core question: were national security concerns sidelined while Huang and the administration pursued policies that benefited Nvidia?

Huang's political ties run deep. Nvidia contributed $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund and $25 million toward the White House ballroom now under construction. Huang has visited Mar-a-Lago and the White House numerous times, and has traveled with the president. He's credited with persuading the administration to allow sales of Nvidia's H20 and H200 chips to China—arguing that spreading those chips, and the CUDA software framework that runs them, served American interests. Nvidia also agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of H20 revenue and 25% of H200 revenue.

Nvidia defended the deal last December. "The Administration's licensing process will ensure that sales of H200 to authorized customers worldwide do not deprive U.S. customers of anything—and will in fact benefit American national and economic security," spokesman John Rizzo said in a statement. "Offering H200 to approved and known commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, raises no cybersecurity risk and strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America."

What did Megaspeed actually get?

Plenty. Megaspeed bought billions of dollars' worth of Nvidia chips in recent years, including some of its most powerful Blackwell chips, which remain off limits to Chinese labs. A Times report last year found boxes of powerful Nvidia chips sitting in a nearly empty Megaspeed office in Malaysia—raising suspicions the company was a conduit for restricted technology bound for China.

The government's own record raises questions too. The Commerce Department opened an investigation into Megaspeed last year, but the inquiry was transferred to the Department of Justice, and little is publicly known about what followed. The Warren–Coons letter seeks records that could show what senior officials knew, why shipments to Megaspeed were allowed to continue, and whether the White House disregarded security recommendations to accommodate Nvidia's commercial interests.

What changes in January?

These questions get sharper when Democrats take control of Congress in January. Coons is expected to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has already called for an investigation into whether national security was compromised while Nvidia and the White House profited from China sales. "We need answers about the relationship between AI billionaires and the Trump administration," Coons wrote on X.

For Nvidia, the market has already delivered a verdict: shares have lost 24.6% of their value since the October 29 report. The company hasn't publicly explained why it accepted Huang's resignation—its SEC filing simply says the board approved his departure. The calculation may have been less about his personal conduct than the mounting financial and political cost of keeping him in charge.