American officials concluded that Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang had a "close relationship" with a Chinese businesswoman suspected of sharing intelligence with Beijing, the New York Times reported.
President Donald Trump was briefed on the findings about a year before the report but did not act.
The woman has been identified as Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a Chinese citizen and senior executive at Singapore-based data-center company Megaspeed.
U.S. intelligence agencies had monitored her for more than a year, suspecting she helped procure advanced Nvidia semiconductors for China while passing information to Chinese authorities.
Officials reportedly do not believe Jensen Huang knowingly assisted Chinese intelligence, and he is said to have never received a formal defensive briefing warning that he might be targeted.
Nvidia rejected suggestions of wrongdoing, calling the meetings routine business interactions, and said separate allegations that chips or information were diverted had been investigated and "debunked."
Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has remained its president and chief executive, building the company into the dominant supplier of processors powering modern AI systems; its most recent reported annual revenue reached about $215 billion.
The episode underscores Nvidia's position at the centre of the U.S.-China contest over advanced AI chips, where export controls and sovereign-AI deals already draw heavy scrutiny of the company's dealings abroad.
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