Old photo of Nvidia CEO enjoying Vietnam's street food shared with false claim after China antitrust probe

After China announced an investigation into US chip giant Nvidia in December 2024 for allegedly violating its anti-monopoly laws, a photo of the company's CEO Jensen Huang circulated in social media posts that falsely claimed it showed him drunk after 'losing the Chinese market'. But the photo was taken a year earlier, during Huang's first visit to Vietnam in 2023.

"Having lost the Chinese market, Jensen Huang, drunk on the streets of Vietnam late at night, saw his hair turned white overnight, with his favourite leather jacket nowhere to be found, wearing only a T-shirt, embodying utter despair," read a simplified Chinese Douyin post on December 13, 2024.

"Look where that got him, as he failed to see the situation clearly," its caption read.

The Douyin post shows a photo of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang -- whose signature look is a leather jacket -- in a black T-shirt, sitting at a street food stall with chopsticks in hand.

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Screenshot of the false Douyin post, captured on December 21, 2024

The photo surfaced shortly after China's State Administration for Market Regulation, the authority on antitrust issues, announced a probe into US chip giant Nvidia on December 9 for allegedly violating its anti-monopoly laws (archived link). 

According to state broadcaster CCTV, Nvidia is also suspected of violating commitments it made in 2020, when it acquired Israeli data centre firm Mellanox Technologies Ltd (archived link).

In response to the allegations, an Nvidia spokesman said in a statement they were "happy to answer any questions" regulators may raise about their business.

Nvidia's position as the leading provider of artificial intelligence (AI) chips has put it in the crossfire of the US-China battle of tech supremacy. Washington has barred the company from selling its most advanced semiconductors to Chinese companies — undermining their ability to develop AI services — which has drawn sharp rebukes from Beijing.

The same image was also shared alongside a similar claim on Weibo and X.

But the photo was taken during Huang's visit to Vietnam in 2023, a year before China announced its investigation into Nvidia.

A reverse image search followed by keyword searches on Google found the photo uploaded by Vietnam's consul general in San Francisco in the United States, Hoang Anh Tuan, on his official Facebook page on December 10, 2023 (archived links here and here).

He also uploaded two other photos of Huang at a street food stand. The Vietnamese-language post said the Silicon Valley chip titan opted to try Vietnam's street food instead of going for fancy dinner parties.

Below is a screenshot of the false post (left) and the photo uploaded on Facebook by the Vietnamese official (right): 

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Screenshot of the false post (left) and the photo uploaded on Facebook by the Vietnamese official (right）

The same photo was also published in an article on December 10, 2023 by Vietnamese online newspaper VnExpress, which said that Hoang was part of the delegation accompanying the Nvidia CEO on his first visit to Vietnam (archived link).

At the time, the Vietnamese government had said Huang wanted to set up a semiconductor base in Vietnam (archived link).

Huang made a second visit to Vietnam on December 5, 2024 -- days before China announced its probe into the US chip giant -- where he met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in the capital Hanoi and signed a deal to establish an AI centre in the Southeast Asian country (archived link).

Following China's announcement of a probe into Nvidia, the company issued a statement on December 12 denying it was "cutting supplies to the Chinese market" (archived link).