U.S. Justice Department probes Megaspeed over suspected Nvidia chip diversion

Nvidia investigated whether its chief executive was a possible espionage target

The Justice Department is investigating Megaspeed International, a Singapore-based cloud provider suspected by U.S. authorities of diverting advanced Nvidia chips to China, according to The Wall Street Journal. U.S. officials believe Megaspeed executive Alice Huang was passing information to the Chinese government, and that belief prompted Nvidia to investigate whether Chief Executive Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign espionage operation.

Megaspeed has been under scrutiny since late 2024. The Commerce Department began investigating whether the company was diverting Nvidia chips to China. That probe stalled, and the Justice Department is now investigating, according to the Journal.

U.S. officials believe Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive who also goes by Huang Le, was passing information to the Chinese government. That belief prompted Nvidia to investigate whether Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign espionage operation. Huang is not related to the Nvidia chief executive.

Nearly two decades before her romance with Jensen Huang collided with the U.S.-China technology cold war, Alice Huang worked as a television reporter for Chinese state media. She later traded journalism for finance, working for Chinese financial companies and the London-based HSBC, according to a 2016 social-media post by another former employer, a Shanghai investment fund.

Around early 2023, Huang officially moved to the company now called Megaspeed International. Spun out of a Chinese videogame company in 2023 and based in Singapore, Megaspeed advertises itself as a cloud provider of Nvidia hardware for the Asia-Pacific region. The company acts as a middleman in the global AI trade, connecting hardware developers, led by Nvidia, with companies that need computing power for AI.

According to a November 2023 letter posted on its website, Megaspeed became a member of an Nvidia partnership program, a status that typically grants priority access to the latest chips. Chinese tech company Alibaba, a leading developer of AI models, was an early Megaspeed customer and remains a major one, according to people familiar with the matter. Megaspeed’s website says the company has several data centers in Southeast Asia and has provided advanced Nvidia AI chips including two popular models, the H100 and B200, both restricted for export to China.

Singapore’s corporate registry shows Alice Huang served as a Megaspeed director from March 2023 to November 2023. She continued to act as a company leader after that, according to an employee and a business partner, and she introduced herself to the business partner as Megaspeed’s CEO as recently as August 2025.

The relationship with Jensen Huang developed through industry events. In early 2024, Huang represented Megaspeed and met Jensen Huang during an annual Nvidia event in California, according to people familiar with the matter. The two later met at Computex Taipei in June 2024. According to a photo posted on LinkedIn by NetThunder, an Nvidia business partner, they appeared at a party together with senior executives from Gigabyte Technology, which develops and sells servers with Nvidia chips.

In May 2025, during a visit to Taiwan, Huang was seen among a group of tech executives dining with Jensen Huang at a local restaurant. Video footage and photos captured the two pecking each other on the cheek and getting into the same car when they left.

Megaspeed did not respond to a request for comment, and efforts to reach Alice Huang were unsuccessful. In a statement posted on LinkedIn on Monday, Megaspeed said investigations by U.S. authorities and others found “no evidence of any violations concerning the illicit transfer of chips or any illegal activities.” The company said it maintains “the highest standards of legal and ethical conduct.”

China’s foreign ministry spokesman said Monday that “the narrative about so-called Chinese spies is entirely based on groundless speculation—it’s nothing more than slander and smearing.”

Megaspeed remains active. In late September, the company dispatched a team of business-development managers from China to an industry event in Singapore, with the goal of financing AI data-center projects in China and Southeast Asia, including some involving Nvidia’s leading-edge Blackwell chips, according to investors they approached. Alice Huang’s current whereabouts aren’t known, but two people in contact with her earlier this year said she was in China at the time.

The stakes are set by U.S. export controls. Restricting sales of Nvidia’s advanced chips to China is a central element of Washington’s strategy for winning the AI race, and the United States now bans the export of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China. In response, markets have sprung up in which Chinese companies either acquire Nvidia chips smuggled into China or rent computing power outside China that uses Nvidia chips.

Jensen Huang has long argued that the United States should loosen the rules restricting sales of his chips to China. He has said this would continue Beijing’s dependence on U.S. chips and help Nvidia bring in revenue that benefits Americans, rather than spurring China to become self-sufficient.