- Executive Alice Huang suspected of sharing intelligence with Beijing.
- Executive Alice Huang developed close ties with Nvidia CEO.
- Trump knew but didn’t act; Megaspeed acquired Nvidia chips.
American intelligence agencies had gathered striking information about a senior executive at Singapore-based data centre company Megaspeed, who was already under scrutiny over suspicions that she had helped China gain access to advanced Nvidia artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
US officials had now concluded that the executive, Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, a Chinese national, was an intelligence asset for Beijing who was passing information to the Chinese government.
But what followed raised even more serious concerns. Surveillance of Huang reportedly revealed that she had developed a close relationship with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, one of the most influential figures in the AI industry, New York Times reported.
For years, Washington has sought to prevent China from acquiring the technology needed to match or surpass the United States in the global race for AI supremacy. The discovery that Beijing was allegedly receiving information from someone with direct access to Jensen Huang, a prominent technology executive and an influential ally of US President Donald Trump, set off alarm bells at the White House.
According to people briefed on the surveillance, Trump was informed of the intelligence findings roughly a year ago but chose not to act on them. The findings, which have not previously been reported, reportedly presented the administration with a difficult choice: act on the intelligence or risk disrupting Nvidia’s chip sales, which have become important to the US economy and stock market, and complicating trade relations with China.
This account is based on interviews with people briefed on the surveillance, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the findings involve classified intelligence, as well as other officials, industry executives and analysts.
US Intelligence Suspects Huang Was Gathering Information For Beijing
American officials had already suspected that Alice Huang was helping China circumvent restrictions on access to advanced AI chips. The assessment that she was also allegedly collecting intelligence for Beijing raised further questions about what information might have reached the Chinese government.
These included whether Jensen Huang had gained insights into Trump’s thinking on an issue of critical importance to both countries, particularly as the US president prepared for a visit to China the following month. Officials also faced questions about whether Alice Huang could have obtained sensitive information about Nvidia, whose technology has helped the United States maintain its lead in developing advanced AI models.
People familiar with the surveillance said Jensen Huang had not received a defensive briefing, a warning sometimes given to Americans believed to be targets of foreign intelligence operations.
The surveillance of Alice Huang was continuing, they said, while companies associated with her continued to purchase Nvidia chips this year.
Nvidia said Megaspeed was like any other regional customer and that it had previously investigated and dismissed allegations that the Singapore-based company was smuggling chips to China.
John Rizzo, a spokesman for Nvidia, said Jensen Huang’s interactions with Alice Huang were neither unusual nor unexpected, adding that meetings with customers were a routine part of a chief executive’s role.
Rizzo also said Nvidia was confident that the US government would inform the company if it believed someone posed a threat to American industry. He added that customers such as Megaspeed received ordinary business information, not sensitive trade secrets or information relevant to national security.
The White House, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency declined to comment.
In a statement, Megaspeed said its current leadership took the matter extremely seriously and was committed to establishing the facts. The company said it had retained external legal counsel to conduct a thorough internal investigation and had informed the US government that it would co-operate fully.
Alice Huang did not respond to requests for comment. It remains unclear how closely she is still associated with Megaspeed. A person familiar with the company’s operations said she had become less active following the US investigations.
Responding to the allegations, Chinese Embassy spokesman Liu Chang accused the United States of conducting a campaign of “groundless smears and slanders” against China.
Questions Remain Over Jensen Huang’s Awareness
When Trump was first briefed on the intelligence last year, US officials did not believe Jensen Huang knew that Alice Huang was allegedly gathering information for China.
It remains unclear whether intelligence agencies have since revised that assessment. However, some senior officials in the Trump administration reportedly doubt that the Nvidia chief executive could have remained unaware of what they believed was her intelligence-gathering role.
It could not be established whether concerns about protecting the surveillance operation influenced the decision not to brief Jensen Huang. Informing him might have alerted Alice Huang that she was being monitored, a possibility that can lead intelligence officials to withhold defensive briefings.
The agencies involved in monitoring Alice Huang, the reasons surveillance began, the circumstances in which she allegedly started gathering information for Beijing and the nature or value of any information passed on remain unclear publicly.
Megaspeed Under US Investigation Since 2024
Earlier reporting by The New York Times described Alice Huang’s rapid and somewhat mysterious rise in the technology sector. A Chinese businesswoman and investor, she became a senior executive at Megaspeed, which the US Commerce Department began suspecting towards the end of the Biden administration of helping China evade restrictions on access to Nvidia’s computing technology.
The US government has investigated Megaspeed since late 2024, when a Commerce Department official visited its data centre in Malaysia and found circumstances considered suspicious. Nvidia equipment remained packed in boxes at the site, suggesting it might have been in transit rather than installed.
Singapore also investigated Megaspeed. In 2025, authorities questioned Alice Huang but subsequently released her.
The Commerce Department’s investigation was transferred to the Justice Department this year, according to administration officials.
Washington has restricted exports of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China since 2022. Despite those restrictions, some companies have been found to have smuggled chips across the Chinese border illegally. Others have established businesses in Southeast Asia that purchase large numbers of chips, build data centres and rent their computing capacity to Chinese companies.
Some US officials and lawmakers view the latter arrangement as a loophole that could allow China to access computing power despite export controls. The Biden administration tightened restrictions on such practices, but Trump later rolled back those rules. His administration is now weighing whether to impose tighter controls again.
Megaspeed is among the Southeast Asian companies that buy chips to build data centres and then provide computing capacity to Chinese businesses.
Megaspeed’s Links To Chinese Firms And Billions In Chip Purchases
Megaspeed operates as an intermediary, purchasing Nvidia chips from the American arm of Chinese server maker Inspur. The US has blacklisted Inspur’s parent company over allegations of supplying technology to the Chinese military, although its American arm has not been sanctioned.
Megaspeed has subsequently provided computing capacity to Alibaba and other Chinese companies. US officials believe it forms part of a wider international effort by Chinese businesses to obtain the chips needed to develop and operate AI systems. Investigators suspect that some Nvidia chips acquired by Megaspeed may also have been diverted illegally into China.
Trade records obtained from ImportGenius, a trade data platform, show that Megaspeed’s sister company in Malaysia bought at least $4.8 billion worth of advanced AI equipment containing Nvidia chips and technology between June 2024 and February 2026. The amount was unusually large for a small, relatively obscure company.
Nvidia and Megaspeed continued doing business this year. The limited data available for much of the year indicates that Megaspeed and its affiliates kept purchasing Nvidia products, often through intermediaries.
Nvidia says it evaluates buyers before approving chip purchases and sometimes conducts follow-up checks to establish whether buyers still possess the equipment. The company continues to list Megaspeed as a cloud partner on its website, while Megaspeed advertised the relationship as recently as this month.
In a job advertisement, Megaspeed’s Indonesian branch described itself as a “premier business partner of Nvidia”. The company has also continued serving Alibaba, its principal client, according to a person familiar with its operations and technology industry analysts.
Photographs Show Jensen Huang With Megaspeed Executive
Photographs posted on LinkedIn in June 2024, weeks before Megaspeed began its chip purchases, showed Jensen Huang alongside Alice Huang at a bar in Taipei following a local technology trade show. They were pictured drinking whisky with other AI executives.
In May 2025, the two were seen leaving a restaurant in Taipei following a business dinner with other AI suppliers. Alice Huang reportedly waited behind Jensen Huang as he spoke to Taiwanese journalists outside the restaurant.
The photographs and encounters were described in an earlier Times report. However, the more detailed intelligence findings concerning Alice Huang had remained closely held within the US administration.
People familiar with the matter said US agencies had conducted electronic surveillance of Alice Huang and discovered that she was communicating with an American citizen.
US intelligence agencies generally cannot legally conduct surveillance of American citizens without appropriate legal authority. When communications involving US citizens are incidentally collected during surveillance of foreign targets, their identities may be withheld from intelligence reports. A process known as “unmasking” allows authorised officials to request those identities when there is a legitimate need to know.
In this case, the unmasking process identified the American citizen as Jensen Huang.
Nvidia Chief’s Growing Influence In Washington
Before 2025, Jensen Huang rarely visited Washington and largely stayed out of politics. That changed as the Trump administration considered restrictions on Nvidia chip sales to China.
Huang and his wife travelled to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, to meet the president at a dinner for wealthy donors. The Nvidia chief sought to persuade Trump to allow American chip companies to continue doing business with China.
People briefed on the discussion said Huang appeared to impress the president with accounts of his personal and professional rise.
Nvidia later donated at least $20 million to Trump’s ballroom fund, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company also pledged to invest $500 billion in manufacturing in the United States.
Huang subsequently occupied a prominent seat at the White House state dinner hosted by Trump for Chinese President Xi Jinping last month.
During Trump’s second term, Huang has successfully lobbied the administration to ease regulations affecting AI companies and roll back tighter restrictions on Nvidia chip sales to China. He also negotiated an arrangement under which the US government would receive a 25 per cent share of revenue from certain Nvidia chips approved for sale to China.
Current and former US officials said the close relationship between Trump and Huang had complicated efforts to restrict Nvidia’s overseas chip sales. They described some investigations and proposed trade sanctions involving China or Nvidia as having stalled within the Commerce Department, which oversees chip export controls.
Nvidia has maintained that it complies with the law and that there is no evidence its chips have been smuggled into China. Rizzo also said the Chinese government had blocked US AI chips to protect its domestic industry.
It remains unclear when Jensen Huang and Alice Huang first met. According to a person who viewed Alice Huang’s social media feed, she had posted photographs of herself with the Nvidia chief before The New York Times reported on her role in purchasing chips last year.
Alice Huang’s Business Background And Expanding Network
Alice Huang has maintained a limited online presence in China. She has described herself as Megaspeed’s chief executive, and corporate records initially listed her as the company’s managing director for its first eight months before she was removed from that position in subsequent filings.
Megaspeed’s current director is a Singaporean who has recently lived in Shanghai, according to business records and social media accounts.
Information published online by a Chinese investment fund where Alice Huang worked describes her as a former television reporter in China. The Times said it could not independently verify that account. She later worked at several major Chinese banks before joining Shanghai-based Hexi Capital, an investment fund that has backed semiconductor- and AI-related businesses, according to data platform WireScreen.
Technology investors familiar with Megaspeed said Alice Huang and her associates had promoted her connections to Jensen Huang while raising funds and building a rapidly expanding network of businesses. The network has invested alongside the Chinese government in data centres across China, according to those investors.
In Southeast Asia, Megaspeed has continued pitching new data centre projects, recruiting employees and promoting its links with Nvidia, according to industry analysts, online job advertisements and other records.
Major Data Centre Project Underway In Malaysia
Megaspeed is pressing ahead with construction of a large data centre in Johor, the Malaysian state bordering Singapore. The region has seen a rise in AI facilities, including developments among palm oil plantations.
In a stock filing last month, a Malaysian property developer said it had received the final payment for a 53-acre plot on which a Megaspeed subsidiary had pledged to build a data centre.
A recent visit by a Times journalist found construction materials stacked between the skeletal frames of partially completed data centre buildings. Outside the site, backhoe loaders were digging into reddish-brown earth as workers installed concrete pipes.
According to a person familiar with the plans, Megaspeed had already secured the chips required for the project.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: abplive.com
