Law firm Wachtell Lipton will lead an independent investigation into whether Nvidia was the target of a foreign espionage effort, the company said Tuesday, following revelations that CEO Jensen Huang had an intimate relationship with an industry executive suspected of working for Chinese intelligence.
The board announced the investigation on Sunday, as Nvidia faces scrutiny from U.S. officials and shareholders after Huang admitted to a relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at the Singapore-based data center firm Megaspeed.
Wachtell's Joon Kim, a former federal prosecutor, will lead the investigation. Kim joined the firm last month.
Nvidia said over the weekend that it had no reason to believe that either national security or company secrets had been compromised, but the inquiry will examine all available information. A committee of independent directors will oversee the investigation, alongside Wachtell.
Kim held several leadership roles at the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, including as its acting head. In 2021, New York Attorney General Letitia James hired Kim, who was at firm Cleary Gottlieb at the time, to investigate sexual harassment allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The office that August released a more-than-100-page report finding that the governor had sexually harassed state employees. Cuomo said the report was biased and mischaracterized everyday interactions.
Wachtell, an elite New York firm with about 300 lawyers, is well-known for conducting internal investigations for major corporations and organizations.
The firm has done work over the years for the National Basketball Association, including investigating a scandal involving the Los Angeles Clippers and star Kawhi Leonard and released its 35-page report in September. Wachtell said in the report it conducted 73 interviews and reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of documents.
