President Donald Trump said over the weekend that the United States would look closely at a New York Times report that a Chinese executive who dealt with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang had been gathering information for Beijing, while praising Huang^1,3.

Speaking in Florida, Trump said he had a lot of respect for Huang, hoped he would be OK, and that the country wanted to protect its brilliant people¹. Asked if he would keep Huang as an adviser, Trump said he would like to say yes unless contrary facts emerged¹.

The Times, as relayed by other outlets, reported unnamed officials said Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a Chinese citizen linked to Singapore cloud firm Megaspeed, had contact with Jensen Huang and was believed to be passing information to Beijing^5,6,4. Nvidia said meetings with customer executives are routine and that regional customers receive ordinary business information, not trade secrets or national-security data^2,4,5. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun called the report groundless speculation and a smear^2,4.

Ars Technica, citing the Times, said sources claimed Trump had been briefed and chose not to act, in part over concern for Nvidia's stock and U.S.-China trade⁶. That account rests on anonymous officials and is denied in substance by Beijing; the White House comment on the original story was not provided to ABC^2,6. What, if anything, was passed to Beijing remains unconfirmed in public⁴.