Nvidia says interactions with Megaspeed executive were ordinary business
US intelligence agencies believe a Chinese intelligence asset who had done business with him targeted Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, according to a New York Times report. The Times reported, citing unnamed sources, that American officials determined Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based datacenter company Megaspeed, was acting as a Chinese intelligence asset who passed commercial information to Beijing.
Alice Huang, also referred to in the report as Huang Le, is of no relation to the Nvidia CEO. She had previously been suspected of smuggling Nvidia chips to China, prompting American officials to surveil and monitor her, the Times reported.
In the course of that surveillance, American officials determined that Alice Huang developed a close relationship with Nvidia’s CEO, according to the Times.
The relationship matters to US officials because Nvidia’s powerful chips serve as a cornerstone of the AI boom and have vaulted Huang into one of the most influential leadership positions in the industry, the Times reported. He has also developed a close partnership with President Donald Trump as the US government attempts to defend its position as a leader in AI development.
White House officials are reportedly alarmed by Alice Huang’s access to the head of Nvidia precisely because of the close relationship he has developed with Trump, according to the Times.
The scrutiny comes against the backdrop of US export policy toward China. The Trump administration has imposed restrictions on exports of advanced AI chips to China as a matter of national security, and Megaspeed’s Huang was suspected of helping the government get around those restrictions, the Times reported.
In a statement to the Times, Nvidia said there was nothing out of the ordinary about the Nvidia CEO’s interactions with Alice Huang. “Meetings with customers are part of a CEO’s job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year,” a spokesperson said in the statement. Megaspeed and customers like it “receive ordinary business information – not sensitive Nvidia trade secrets – and zero information relevant to national security,” the company said.