Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott also asked Huang and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to testify, according to Reuters, as Congress presses its probe of the Nvidia chip pipeline to China. The request follows the resignation that ended Huang 33 year tenure, and it puts the former chief executive and the commerce secretary on the same witness list.
Why it matters
The probe centres on a 4.8 billion dollar pipeline of advanced Nvidia chips to China through a Singapore firm. Two senators have issued formal document preservation demands to the White House, State and Commerce departments, setting a deadline of November 17, and the demands follow disclosures that Singapore based Megaspeed purchased over 4.8 billion dollars in advanced chips since June 2024.
Megaspeed is under a Justice Department investigation for illicit diversion of export restricted chips to China, and its former executive Alice Huang is alleged to be a Chinese intelligence asset. Singapore said on November 12 that it barred her from re-entering in February and found she gave inaccurate information about her role at Megaspeed.
What happens next
Huang has agreed to brief House lawmakers before Thanksgiving, with the date still under negotiation, and the Senate request adds a formal hearing to the informal briefing. The questions will cover the chips and the paperwork, and the answers will decide whether export controls face a reckoning in Congress or whether the probe ends with the resignation.
Beijing has denied that there was any Chinese plot to spy on Huang, and the Nvidia board has said it has no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised. The denials do not answer the Senate questions, which are about the pipeline, and the testimony, when it comes, will be watched on both sides of the Pacific.
The document demands cover the White House, the State Department and the Commerce Department, which together oversee export controls. If the paper trail confirms the diversion, export controls will face hard questions in Congress. If it does not, the probe will still have put the chip pipeline under a spotlight it cannot easily leave.
