According to the New York Times, US intelligence agencies believe that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang may be the target of a person working for Chinese intelligence. This person is the leader of Megaspeed, an AI cloud company in Singapore that has been investigated for suspicion of bringing NVIDIA chips banned from export to China. NVIDIA denied that the relationship was unusual, and the Chinese embassy in Washington called the allegations fabricated.

This case is right in the middle of the biggest story in the chip industry this year: who gets to buy NVIDIA's AI GPUs and where the chips go after they are sold.

What happened

The character mentioned is Alice Huang, Chinese name Huang Le, Chinese citizen, not related to Jensen Huang. According to TechCrunch and Tom's Hardware, she is a senior leader of Megaspeed, an Nvidia cloud partner that specializes in building data centers and then leasing computing power to Chinese companies like Alibaba. Engadget quoted NYT saying she introduced herself as CEO of Megaspeed, and the company listed her as CEO for the first 8 months before removing it from the records.

According to NYT, US intelligence followed Alice Huang for about a year to learn about her relationship with China. That process discovered that she had contact with an American citizen, later identified as Jensen Huang. Intelligence agencies concluded she was an informant for Beijing. NYT did not state what information she may have passed on.

Alice Huang has appeared with Jensen Huang many times in business meetings. A photo posted on NetThunder's LinkedIn in 2024, around Computex 2024, shows her sitting next to Jensen Huang and other AI leaders. About a year later, around Computex 2025, the two were again seen leaving a restaurant in Taipei with partners.

According to NYT sources, the US side's concern is that Alice Huang is so close to Jensen Huang that she can gather information about Nvidia's plans, as well as his efforts to persuade the Trump administration to allow the sale of more advanced technology to China.

Megaspeed and the chip detour

Megaspeed is not a new name. In 2025, NYT once reported that the US Department of Commerce was investigating this company for suspicion of helping Chinese businesses avoid AI chip export regulations by reselling restricted chips. Tom's Hardware said that when they arrived at Megaspeed's data center in Malaysia, the Ministry of Commerce found that the Nvidia equipment was still in the box, raising suspicions that the machine had just been shipped or was about to be shipped instead of installed on site. Megaspeed is accused of helping smuggle about $2 billion in Nvidia chips last year.

Engadget quoted NYT as saying that Megaspeed's sister company in Malaysia has purchased at least $4.8 billion in equipment using the NVIDIA platform in less than two years. NYT considers this an unusual transaction volume for a small and little-known company. These two numbers talk about two different things, one is the value of the chip allegedly smuggled, the other is the total value of the equipment the sister company purchased.

How ​​does NVIDIA and China react

An Nvidia spokesperson told TechCrunch and Tom's Hardware that Megaspeed is no different from other cloud customers in the region. It's natural for Jensen Huang to meet Alice Huang, because meeting customers is a CEO's job, and he meets thousands of customer leaders every year. Nvidia asserts that regional cloud customers receive only routine business information, no Nvidia trade secrets, and no information related to national security.

NVIDIA also said that the company believes that if the US government sees someone as a threat to US industry, it will notify NVIDIA, and the company regularly receives updates on parties of concern to handle. The Chinese Embassy in Washington rejected it all, calling these baseless smears.

Most controversial point

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According to NYT, President Trump was informed about the incident about a year ago but took no action. Jensen Huang also never received a defensive briefing, a form US counterintelligence agencies sometimes use to notify US citizens that they are being targeted by foreign intelligence. US officials do not believe that Jensen Huang knew about Alice Huang's activities.

The reason is unknown. NYT said Mr. Trump is inherently cautious about anything that could affect NVIDIA's chip sales or make trade with China more complicated. It's also possible that authorities worried that warning Jensen Huang would make Alice Huang aware she was being followed, while her surveillance continued.

Why is this worth paying attention to

I think this case shows a weakness of the entire AI chip export control system. NVIDIA sells chips to cloud partners in Singapore and Malaysia, and these partners rent computing power to customers everywhere. Each intermediate step is a difficult place to control where the final chip is and who is using it. On the same news page, Tom's Hardware also reviewed many recent cases surrounding Nvidia chips entering China, from the case of a technology company CEO in California being arrested for smuggling $300 million in AI servers, to the discovery of Blackwell Ultra B300 GPUs in China Telecom's network.

Personally, I think, even though NYT does not accuse Jensen Huang of doing anything wrong, the pressure on NVIDIA will increase. A company that has been lobbying to sell more chips to China now has to explain why a customer suspected of smuggling chips was present next to its CEO multiple times. It's likely that cloud partners in Asia will come under closer scrutiny regarding where chips are installed and to whom they are rented.