AI Insider: The Nvidia CEO spy scandal

This week in AI was about cracks starting to show. The man who controls the world's most important AI chips is now under investigation, Wall Street just had its worst AI day on record, and even Microsoft is quietly pulling back on its AI spending. But it was not all fear: Amazon made it possible to shop by texting Alexa, and a free AI agent just picked up 1.54 million daily users. Here is everything that actually mattered.

I've filtered out the noise for you

Five stories, no hype and no filler. Here is what happened in AI this week and why each one matters for you.

1. Nvidia's CEO just got caught in an affair with a possible Chinese spy. Here's why it matters for AI.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted in an email to staff that he had an affair, and now his board has opened an independent investigation into whether the woman involved was part of a Chinese intelligence operation. Because Huang runs the company behind nearly every advanced AI chip on the planet, any national security question around him ripples out to the cost and supply of computing for the entire industry. The board says it has no reason to believe secrets were compromised, but the probe, and a drop in Nvidia's stock, show how much rides on one person.

Link here.

2. You can now text Alexa to find the best deals and buy anything on Amazon.

Amazon is rolling out a version of Alexa for Shopping that you can simply text like a contact in your phone. Send it a message, or even a photo of a recipe or an outfit, and the agent searches products, compares options, tracks prices, and places orders with your approval. It is starting with a small group of invited US customers, and yes, sponsored products can show up in its replies.

Link here.

3. What role did AI play in the 2026 midterm elections costing Wall Street $2.9 trillion in a day?

After the 2026 midterm results, tech stocks had their worst single day on record, with S&P 500 companies losing roughly $2.9 trillion and the Nasdaq around $2.5 trillion in market value. The trigger was fear that a new Congress will crack down on the massive, power-hungry data centers behind the AI boom. The market bounced back a little the next day, but the message was clear: AI is now the thing that moves Wall Street.

Link here.

4. Why is Microsoft suddenly hitting the brakes on its AI spending? Is the boom slowing down?

Microsoft is winding down a deal to rent AI computing power from Oracle, part of a larger rethink of more than $80 billion in compute commitments. The reported reason is simple: the rented hardware ran on older Nvidia chips that no longer met Microsoft's needs. It is one deal, but when the biggest spender in AI starts trimming, people start asking whether the boom is finally cooling off.

Link here.

5. Meet Harness, DeepSeek's free AI agent now used by 1.54 million people a day. Here's what it does.

DeepSeek says its free, open-source AI agent app, Harness, hit 1.54 million daily users as of November 4, less than three months after launch and up from around 271,000 at the end of September. Harness lets people run AI agents that carry out real tasks, and roughly 35,000 community-built plugins already extend what it can do. A plugin marketplace is coming next.

Link here.

Bonus: Content of the Week

This week's pick is the SpaceX YouTube channel, which regularly posts short documentaries on how its technology gets built, including the operations, the milestones, and the failures. Nicolas also shares his own channel: https://www.youtube.com/@nicolasimagine