Jensen Huang was agitated.

It was September 2025, and The New York Times had just called his company about a Singaporean data center firm called Megaspeed that had been led by a Chinese woman named Alice Huang, or Huang Le. The Times was reporting that Mr. Huang, the chief executive of the chip maker Nvidia, had a close relationship with her.

Mr. Huang, who Nvidia employees say could have a volcanic temper, wanted to know what The Times was insinuating. Though he didn’t deny that he knew the woman, he was bothered by the suggestion that they might be close, people familiar with the discussion said.

Nvidia mounted an aggressive defense. Madison Huang, Mr. Huang’s daughter who acted as her father’s chief of staff, pressed the company’s communications team to push back forcefully. They also had reinforcements, a crisis communications firm called Heller.

They insisted that Mr. Huang and the woman from Megaspeed just had a business relationship.

Over the next 13 months, Mr. Huang stuck with his story, even after The Times reported last month that the U.S. had gathered intelligence showing that Ms. Huang was secretly working with China’s top spy agency.