NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang suspected of contact with Chinese spy; no U.S. response

[Financial News] Jensen Huang, CEO of U.S.-based NVIDIA, is alleged to have had contact with someone suspected of being a Chinese spy, but the U.S. government did not stop it. China called the allegations “baseless slander.”
The New York Times (NYT), citing people familiar with the matter, reported on the 29th (local time) that Jensen Huang had contact with a Chinese national named Jinin Alice Huang (Chinese name Huang Le). According to the NYT, U.S. intelligence officials consider Alice Huang a Chinese spy and believe she leaked information about Jensen Huang and NVIDIA to China.
Alice Huang is a senior executive at Megaspeed International, a data center company headquartered in Singapore. According to some Chinese sources, they previously worked as a broadcast journalist in China. Alice Huang later worked at major Chinese banks and then at Heushi Capital, an investment firm that funds semiconductor and AI companies, among others. They introduced themselves to outsiders as the CEO of Megaspeed International, but in the company's early days their actual position was director. Alice Huang is confirmed to have later stepped down from the director position as well.
Megaspeed International buys artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors from NVIDIA and builds data centers, then leases the computing resources to Chinese companies. NVIDIA currently lists the company as a cloud partner on its website. The company's Malaysian affiliate bought at least $4.8 billion worth of AI equipment containing NVIDIA chips from June 2024 through February this year (about 6.4 trillion won). This is an unusually large amount for a company of its size.
Since 2024, U.S. authorities have investigated whether Megaspeed International smuggled NVIDIA chips into China, despite their being banned from export to China.
Alice Huang, who had established business ties with NVIDIA, reportedly raised investment funds by flaunting their closeness with Jensen Huang on social media, posting photos of the two together. In June 2024, they also posted a photo with Jensen Huang on LinkedIn. In May last year, Alice Huang was also spotted leaving a restaurant after a business dinner with Jensen Huang, along with representatives of other AI suppliers.
U.S. intelligence officials had reported the contact to President Donald Trump a year earlier. Trump, however, took no significant action. U.S. authorities also reportedly did not give Jensen Huang a “defensive briefing” to inform him that he had become a target of foreign intelligence agencies. YT added that it was unclear which intelligence agency had monitored Alice Huang or what information Alice Huang had passed on.
NVIDIA spokesperson John Rizzo said of the report, “Meeting with customers is part of a CEO’s job, and Jensen speaks with thousands of customer-company executives every year,” adding, “I’m confident that if the U.S. government had determined that a particular individual posed a threat to American industry, it would have informed us.” Liu Chang, a spokesperson for the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United States of America, dismissed the report as “baseless accusations and slander.”
Megaspeed International said, “We are taking this matter extremely seriously and doing everything we can to establish the relevant facts,” and asserted that it was actively cooperating with the U.S. government investigation.
 
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