🇨🇳 New overnight: China Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Guo Jiakun denied today that there was a spy plot to ensnare Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, calling the reports "nothing but smears against China."

Axios managing editor for AI & tech Bradley Olson, writing from the Bay Area, zooms out to help us think about yesterday's bombshell news about Nvidia, which goes back and forth with Apple as the world's most valuable company:

There's no Nvidia — or AI boom as we know it — without Jensen Huang. He has reassured jittery markets with his words, bankrolled a trillion-dollar buildout and put economies on his shoulders.

• Why it matters: The AI ecosystem's first "too big to fail" executive is suddenly vulnerable, with no visible, viable backup plan if he's forced to step down. Jensen Huang (pronounced wong), the founder and CEO, says he leads by "extreme co-design" with a "direct staff" of 60 people.

⚡ Catch up quick: Huang, 63, apologized to his staff yesterday after admitting to a relationship with an alleged Chinese operative. Nvidia's board launched an independent probe. (Read his letter.)

• The board expressed confidence in his leadership and said it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised.

💡 Three questions now loom over the AI boom:

1. What happens to Nvidia? The 33-year-old chip company — based in Santa Clara, Calif., in Silicon Valley — is uniquely founder-driven, making any potential leadership transition incredibly perilous.

• Huang eschews traditional corporate layers and hasn't publicly groomed a successor. Investors have little precedent for valuing Nvidia without him.

2. What happens to the market? Huang has repeatedly rescued the AI trade from bearish sentiment.

• In July, he argued that cheaper open models would boost demand for Nvidia's chips, pushing back against a market scare.
• Last month, he toured Europe pitching national AI projects as debt investors signaled limits to their appetite for AI financing.

3. What happens to the companies that depend on him? "Neoclouds" like CoreWeave, which rent out computing power, have the least room to maneuver. Nvidia has provided crucial backstops to many of them.

• AI giants have more options: Anthropic already uses chips from Google and Amazon, and OpenAI is developing its own. But replacing Nvidia isn't in the cards in the near term.

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President Trump stood by Jensen Huang last night, telling reporters that the Nvidia CEO is "an honorable guy" and "probably has an excuse" for his infidelity, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: Huang has become one of Trump's closest corporate allies, fashioning himself as a leader with unparalleled clout in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street and inside the White House.

🔭 Zoom in: The New York Times first exposed the suspected Chinese espionage operation on Oct. 29, reporting that a woman believed to be working for Beijing had developed a close relationship with Nvidia's CEO.

• The company portrayed their interactions as routine business dealings — an account now under scrutiny after Huang admitted he was "unfaithful" to his wife.
• U.S. officials believe Beijing's top spy agency recruited Alice Huang, an executive at Nvidia customer Megaspeed, to gather information and potentially influence Nvidia's campaign to expand advanced chip sales to China.

The intrigue: The Trump administration reportedly knew about the suspected Chinese intelligence operation long before it became public.

• Trump was briefed in 2025, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally oversaw a classified intelligence memo warning senior officials this spring, according to the Times.
• Yet Trump continued to embrace Huang as a trusted adviser, welcoming him to the White House as the Nvidia chief pressed to loosen restrictions on advanced chip exports to China.

🥊 Reality check: There's no public evidence that Huang's relationship influenced his advocacy for selling to China, a longstanding commercial priority for Nvidia.

• John Rizzo, the company's head of public policy communications, said in a statement yesterday: "Today's news will not slow NVIDIA. Jensen is committed to continuing to lead NVIDIA as CEO without interruption."

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Holly Otterbein popped this scoop last night in Axios 2028, our weekly newsletter on the forces shaping the presidential campaign:

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani can't be president, so he's trying to be the next best thing: a progressive kingmaker for 2028.

• Mamdani has been meeting privately with union leaders, urgently talking up the need for a labor-aligned or leftist candidate to run for the White House, four people familiar with the talks told Axios.

Why it matters: Behind closed doors, Mamdani has made a striking admission that helps explain why he's so eager to huddle with allies about 2028: He's uncertain whether New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, his close political partner, will launch a White House run, the sources said.

🔎 Zoom in: Mamdani — who's ineligible to be president because he was born in Uganda — wants to coordinate with progressive leaders partly to prepare to unite against any leading centrist presidential contender they aren't happy with, according to one of the sources who has spoken with the mayor.

• Mamdani "wants the progressive ecosystem to mobilize quickly, strategically and efficiently if a moderate candidate is clearly on the rise," the person said, pointing to how former President Barack Obama appeared to help Joe Biden consolidate support against Bernie Sanders in 2020.

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In his first sit-down interview since his midterm wipeout, President Trump told "60 Minutes" correspondent Ross Douthat that the administration's deportation policy "might be too tough" and left the door open to a deal with Democrats on immigration.

• An hour after the interview, Trump replaced White House chief of staff Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller, the architect of his immigration crackdown.

Trump acknowledged that his crackdown had swept up people who had lived and worked in the U.S. for years, including hotel and landscaping workers whose only violation was entering the country illegally.

• Trump said the idea would be to "get the killers out. Get all ... the rough ones out. Get the drug dealers out. But let the people that are here, and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years, work a deal for them."

💬 More Trump quotes:

• Iran war: Trump said he'd go to war with Iran again if given the choice: "My answer is an emphatic yes because you can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. I think, historically, this will be a very good decision. Is it a good decision for today and tomorrow? Maybe not. But you know, I have to go with what's right for our country."
• AI regulations: Trump said he'd be willing to work with Democrats on safeguards for AI. "I don't mind guardrails," he said. "But I don't wanna put us in a deep second position. We're leading number one. And China has no guardrails."
• Going to heaven: Asked whether he could forgive political enemies such as Nancy Pelosi and James Comey if it would mean getting to enter heaven, Trump said: "I probably cannot do that, no, because I do hate some of my enemies and I always will."

Watch the interview ... Extended version ... Full transcript.

Elon Musk's sprawling empire — from rockets to robots, electric cars to AI — is facing a political onslaught with few parallels in modern corporate history, Axios' Zachary Basu writes:

💰 1. Political: Musk's most humiliating defeat came in Texas, where a $160 million bet on Ken Paxton ended in a Democratic sweep of the Senate seat, governorship and attorney general's office.

• In a hint of a possible détente, Sen.-elect James Talarico praised the billionaire as a "great business leader and entrepreneur," and offered to work with him on technology and innovation.

⚖️ 2. Congressional: Armed with subpoena power, Democrats are preparing to investigate Musk's DOGE operation, its access to sensitive government data and whether his companies benefited from his extraordinary influence over the Trump administration.

🏭 3. Regulatory: Musk moved his home and the headquarters of Tesla, SpaceX and X to Texas, betting on a safe haven for his expanding empire. Now, the Democratic takeover threatens to turn his political sanctuary into a regulatory minefield.

📉 4. Financial: Tesla and SpaceX shed roughly $460 billion in combined market value in the two days after the election, then rebounded Friday as investors raced to reassess the risks to Musk's business empire. Wall Street is especially concerned that Democratic scrutiny could complicate a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger.

• Keep reading.

Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) last night called for a delay in tomorrow's Senate GOP leadership elections, injecting a surprise note of uncertainty into what had been a largely foregone conclusion before Republicans' devastating midterm defeat, Axios' Hans Nichols writes.

• Why it matters: No one has officially challenged Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.). But the push to delay — also backed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — signals growing unease with plans to quickly reelect him.

🖼️ The big picture: President Trump clashed repeatedly with Thune over his resistance to eliminating the filibuster and the Senate's failure to pass parts of his agenda, like the SAVE America Act.

• Trump renewed his criticism after the midterms, blaming the Senate in part for Republicans' election losses.

Read McCormick's post ... Get Axios Hill Leaders, our weeknight newsletter from the Capitol.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells Axios' Madison Mills that he remains staunchly bullish on an industry facing rising social pushback, saying data centers can occupy America's "empty spaces" and predicting a near-term revolution in AI-assisted research.

• In a wide-ranging interview following his appointment to lead Caltech's board of trustees, Schmidt acknowledged the industry does a "terrible" job marketing itself to voters.
• Yet, looking from his new perch at what he calls the "crown jewel of nerddom," he sees an unstoppable wave of AI-augmented scientists poised to dominate the future workforce.

"We talk about all the negatives without talking the positives, and people are much more likely to index their minds on the negatives," he says.

• Full interview.

As beef prices soar, chicken is the rising star of date night, according to a dining trends forecast from The Infatuation.

• Trendy restaurants are serving up their takes on the classic roast bird with unexpected sides, sauces and seasonings, Axios' Erica Pandey writes.

🌴 What else is trending: Miami's hot spots! For years, Miami was a secondary location for buzzy restaurants like Carbone and Cote. But now the city is exporting its own.

• Pura Vida, the Miami-born cafe and juice bar, is everywhere, including New York, D.C., Massachusetts and California.
• Skinny Louie, a smashburger spot, has also made the jump to New York City.
• Kyu, an upscale pan-Asian spot, started in Miami and has spread to L.A., Vegas and New York City.

👑 The Infatuation has also crowned its best new restaurants of 2026, which include D.C.'s Rye Bunny and Boulder's Casa Juani.

• More trends ... The Infatuation's best new restaurants.