Μake us preferred on Google SINGAPORE—Nearly two decades before her romance with Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang collided with the U.S.-China technology cold war, Alice Huang was a television reporter for Chinese state media.
She traded journalism for finance, working for Chinese financial companies and London-based HSBC , according to a 2016 social-media post by another former employer, a Shanghai investment fund.
Then came the career move that would end up catching Washington’s attention. Around early 2023, she officially moved to the company now called Megaspeed International—which the U.S. is investigating as a potential backdoor used to funnel America’s most coveted artificial-intelligence chips to China.
A central element of Washington’s strategy for winning the AI race is restricting sales of Nvidia’s advanced chips to China. Now, U.S. officials believe that Alice Huang was passing information to the Chinese government, prompting Nvidia to investigate whether Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign espionage operation. Alice Huang, who also goes by Huang Le, isn’t related to the Nvidia CEO.
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.”
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. 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.
The company acts as a middleman in the global AI trade, connecting companies, led by Nvidia, that develop hardware to the companies that need computing power for AI. 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.
A photo shows NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang with a woman confirmed by a Reuters source to be Alice Huang in Taipei, Taiwan released on June 7, 2024. Obtained by Reuters/via REUTERS VERIFICATIONS: Source confirmed to Reuters that the woman sitting next to Jensen Huang in the picture is Alice Huang Multiple reports and a Reuters source said the picture was taken at an event during COMPUTEX forum in Taipei in June 2024 Exact time when the image was taken could not be confirmed Reuters footage shows Jensen Huang attended COMPUTEX forum in Taipei in June 2024 The woman seen with Jensen Huang matched the woman seen in the video filmed in 2025 standing next to Jensen Huang and entering the same car.
Megaspeed didn’t 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.”
Megaspeed’s website says it 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 director at Megaspeed from March 2023 to November 2023. She continued to act as a company leader after that, according to an employee and a business partner. She introduced herself to the business partner as Megaspeed’s CEO as recently as August 2025.
In early 2024, Alice represented Megaspeed and met Jensen during an annual Nvidia event in California, people familiar with the matter said.
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 along with senior executives from Gigabyte Technology, which develops and sells servers with Nvidia chips.
In May 2025, during a visit to Taiwan, Alice was seen among a group of tech executives dining with Jensen at a local restaurant. Video footage and photos captured the two pecking each other on the cheek and getting into the same car when leaving.
Megaspeed remains active. In late September, the company dispatched a team of business-development managers from China to attend an industry event in Singapore. Their goal was to finance 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.
In late 2024, the Commerce Department began investigating whether Megaspeed was diverting Nvidia chips to China. That probe stalled, but the Justice Department is now investigating.
Jensen Huang has long argued that the U.S. should loosen the rules that restrict sales of its 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.
But for now, the U.S. 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.
Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com and Raffaele Huang at raffaele.huang@wsj.com
