Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said on 29 October that the chipmaker’s dealings with Singapore-based Megaspeed International were “normal and not unusual”, Bloomberg reported. He was responding to a New York Times report about an investigation into whether a Megaspeed executive was working for Chinese intelligence. Huang said Nvidia’s relationship with the company’s officials was proper and that Nvidia had checked whether Megaspeed had illegally sent its AI processors to China.
Key points
- Huang said Nvidia’s dealings with Megaspeed were ordinary and that the company had checked for illegal chip shipments to China.
- US intelligence agencies concluded that a Megaspeed executive was acting as a Chinese intelligence asset, according to reporting carried by the New York Post.
- Nvidia said earlier allegations that Megaspeed diverted chips had been investigated and debunked.
Nvidia defends its Megaspeed relationship
Nvidia described Megaspeed as one of its regional cloud customers in a statement to CNBC. A spokesperson said Huang speaks with thousands of customers each year and that his interactions with Megaspeed officials were not unusual. The spokesperson also said customers do not receive Nvidia trade secrets or information relevant to national security.
The company separately rejected the earlier suspicion that Megaspeed had helped companies evade US restrictions on exports of Nvidia AI chips to China. “The diversion allegations against this regional cloud were thoroughly investigated and debunked last year,” the spokesperson told CNBC. That is Nvidia’s account of the investigation’s outcome. Huang’s account of Nvidia’s own checks addresses a narrower question: whether Megaspeed illegally shipped its processors to China.
Those distinctions matter for a cloud customer. US export rules bar China from buying Nvidia’s powerful AI chips, Bloomberg reported. Megaspeed’s business also involves providing computing power to Chinese companies from data centres elsewhere in Asia. The allegation about a customer’s conduct, the question of physical chip diversion and the intelligence assessment of an executive concern different activities, even though they have converged on Nvidia’s relationship with the firm.
Alice Huang and the intelligence investigation
Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, is a Chinese citizen who served as a senior executive at Megaspeed, the New York Post reported. The company supplies AI computing power to Chinese customers. According to the Post, US intelligence agencies concluded while investigating Megaspeed that Alice Huang was passing information to Beijing. Surveillance identified Jensen Huang among her contacts, and the account offered no evidence that he knew of her alleged intelligence activities.
The New York Post reported that the New York Times could not determine what information Alice Huang had passed on or how valuable it was to Chinese authorities. Photographs posted online showed her and Jensen Huang at a Taipei bar in June 2024 with other people from the AI industry. They were also seen leaving a Taipei restaurant after a business dinner with AI suppliers in May 2025. Those encounters form part of the reported contact between the executive and Nvidia’s chief, rather than evidence that he knew of the alleged intelligence activity.
President Donald Trump was briefed on the intelligence findings roughly a year ago and chose not to act, the New York Post reported. US officials initially believed Jensen Huang did not know of Alice Huang’s alleged activities, according to the same account. Some senior administration officials now doubt that he could have remained unaware, although the Post said it was unclear whether intelligence agencies had formally changed their assessment.
Megaspeed’s chip supply and Washington ties
Megaspeed had been under investigation over suspicions that it helped Chinese firms circumvent US export restrictions, according to the Post. The company buys Nvidia chips through the US arm of Inspur, a Chinese server maker, and rents computing power from Southeast Asian data centres to Chinese businesses. Inspur’s parent has been placed under US sanctions for supplying technology to China’s military, while its American subsidiary is not subject to those sanctions.
Jensen Huang has personally pressed Trump to permit Nvidia to keep selling chips to China, the Post reported. Nvidia gave at least $20 million towards Trump’s White House ballroom fund, according to a person familiar with the matter. The reported access to the president was among the concerns raised by US intelligence officials monitoring Alice Huang’s contacts with the Nvidia chief.
Nvidia’s spokesperson suggested the US government had not warned the company about Alice Huang. “We’re confident that if the U.S. government believes that any person is a threat to American industry, it would let us know,” the spokesperson told CNBC.
