[Financial News] A claim has emerged that Alice Huang, a 42-year-old Chinese businesswoman known as the lover of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, smuggled large quantities of NVIDIA artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators whose export the U.S. government had prohibited into China. The amount diverted is estimated at at least $7.5 billion (about 10 trillion won). On the 10th (local time), U.S. media outlets including the IT publication The Information and The New York Times (NYT) reported that Alice Huang used the Singaporean company Megaspeed International, which she acquired in 2023, to carry out the circumvention operation. NYT claimed that Alice Huang built a complex corporate network linking China, Singapore and Malaysia with family members, including Kang Wei, who is said to be her husband, and her younger sister, Huang Yu, and used it to secure large quantities of NVIDIA accelerators. Alice Huang introduced Kang Wei publicly as her husband, but it has not been confirmed whether the two were actually married. In 2023, Alice Huang acquired a Singaporean subsidiary established in 2015 by the Chinese gaming company Seven Road, changed its name to Megaspeed International and turned it into an AI cloud provider. According to reports, Alice Huang and her family used Megaspeed International’s Malaysian subsidiary, Speedmatrix, and the Chinese company Shanghai Century Litong, established in June 2023, to bring into China NVIDIA accelerators whose export to China was prohibited. Century Litong, with Huang Yu listed among its founding shareholders, secured “preferred cloud partner” status with NVIDIA in October 2023, just four months after its establishment, and received priority supplies of AI accelerators. But when orders for NVIDIA products were suspended or delayed due to U.S. export controls on China, Alice Huang stepped in and used her connections at NVIDIA and elsewhere to secure supplies. A total of 240,000 high-performance NVIDIA AI accelerators—including H100, H200 and A100 models—were either smuggled into China by Alice Huang or provided there through data-center computing-resource leases. The computing capacity provided by these chips was made available not only to Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings Limited but also to small and midsize AI companies in China, and was used to train AI models and for other purposes. Alice Huang, whom the U.S. identified as an associate of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), is said to have met Jensen Huang at locations around the world over the past three years, including Shanghai, Taiwan, NVIDIA’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, and a golf resort south of San Jose, California. At a technology event in Taiwan in June 2024, she also flaunted her closeness to him, saying she could call Jensen Huang. The U.S. Department of Commerce had been monitoring Alice Huang’s distribution of AI accelerators since 2024. The department found unopened NVIDIA equipment piled up at a Megaspeed International data center, and Taiwanese authorities also monitored Alice Huang’s visits at the request of the U.S. government. Singaporean authorities, while investigating Megaspeed International, summoned Alice Huang over suspected offenses including making false declarations about imported goods, but closed the investigation due to insufficient evidence. Alice Huang later left for Shanghai and was reportedly in China until early this year, but her whereabouts are now unknown. [email protected] Park Jong-won Reporter