US investigates Chinese espionage targeting Nvidia CEO
According to The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, an executive at Singapore-based AI cloud company Megaspeed, Alice Huang (Huang Le), who is accused of illegally selling Nvidia chips to China, may also be a Chinese spy. US intelligence agencies have surveilled her for about a year, focusing on whether her close relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was used to obtain information about Nvidia's shipment plans to China. An Nvidia spokesperson denied this claim to TechCrunch, saying that Jensen Huang's interactions with the executive were no different from those with other regional customers, and that regional cloud customers only receive ordinary commercial information, not sensitive trade secrets or national security information. In 2025, The New York Times reported that the US Department of Commerce had opened an investigation into Megaspeed for helping Chinese companies circumvent AI chip export controls.
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Report reveals that US intelligence agencies investigated the relationship between a Megaspeed executive and Nvidia's CEO, touching on the enforcement boundaries of chip export controls.
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A top executive of a Singapore AI cloud firm that was accused of illegally selling Nvidia chips to China could also have been a Chinese spy, anonymous sources told the New York Times .
The executive, Alice Huang (or Huang Le), worked for Megaspeed and was photographed as one of multiple people hanging out with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during various business dinners in the Singapore region. U.S. intelligence agencies had been surveilling Alice Huang to learn more about her ties with China for about a year, the Times reports.
The concern, sources said, was that Alice Huang had grown so close to Jensen Huang that she could have been gathering information about Nvidia’s plans and the CEO’s efforts to convince the Trump administration to allow it to ship more advanced technology to China.
But an Nvidia spokesperson denied this, telling TechCrunch that the CEO’s relationship with the Megaspeed executive was the same as with any other regional customer.
“Jensen’s interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected. Meetings with customers are part of a C.E.O.’s job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The company also said, “Our regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information — not sensitive NVIDIA trade secrets — and zero information relevant to national security.”
In 2025, the Times reported that the Commerce Department had investigated Megaspeed over concerns that it was helping Chinese companies sidestep AI chip export regulations by reselling restricted chips to them. Alice Huang was said to be a top executive for the firm at the time.