U.S. investigated Chinese spy plot aimed at Nvidia CEO
Anonymous sources told The New York Times that a senior executive at Singapore AI cloud firm Megaspeed may have been a Chinese spy. Nvidia denies this, saying its relationship with her was typical of customer ties.
A senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based AI cloud company, may have been working as a Chinese spy, anonymous sources have told The New York Times. Megaspeed has been accused of illegally selling chips made by U.S. technology company Nvidia to China. Nvidia makes the processors widely used in artificial intelligence systems.
Surveillance and concerns
According to the Times, U.S. intelligence agencies spent about a year monitoring the executive, Alice Huang (also known as Huang Le), to learn more about her links to China. She was photographed with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at several business dinners in the Singapore region, where other people were also present.
The sources said the worry was that she had become so close to Jensen Huang that she could have been collecting information about Nvidia's plans. It was also thought she might have been learning about the CEO's efforts to persuade the Trump Administration to let the company ship more advanced technology to China.
Nvidia's response
An Nvidia spokesperson rejected the suggestion in comments to TechCrunch. The spokesperson said the CEO's relationship with the Megaspeed executive was the same as with any other regional customer. Meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job, the spokesperson said, and Jensen Huang speaks with thousands of customer executives each year.
The company also stressed that its regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information rather than sensitive trade secrets, and no information relevant to national security.
Earlier investigation
In 2025, the Times reported that the U.S. Commerce Department had investigated Megaspeed. The concern was that the firm was helping Chinese companies get around AI chip export rules by reselling restricted chips to them. Alice Huang was reported to be a senior executive at the company at that time.
