Two days ago, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang admitted in a message to employees that he had been unfaithful to his wife. He didn’t share details of the relationship, but a series of news reports had already tied him to Alice Huang, a top executive at data center company Megaspeed, whom US officials suspect of being a Chinese intelligence asset. Following Jensen Huang’s admission, Nvidia’s board launched an inquiry into whether he was the target of a foreign intelligence effort.
The news shook Silicon Valley, and the ripples could be felt all the way up to the White House. At a press briefing, US President Donald Trump has now revealed that he had spoken with Jensen Huang and said that the FBI is looking into the situation. Trump added that Huang told him he had “no idea” Alice Huang was a spy. Separately, US authorities have been investigating whether Megaspeed helped China get access to Nvidia chips restricted under US export controls, a probe now being led by the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, The Information reports that Jensen Huang’s relationship with the Megaspeed executive helped facilitate the shipment of Nvidia AI chips worth at least $7.5 billion to companies in China. Citing two people who know her, the report says Alice Huang, along with her family members, built a web of companies across Singapore and China to acquire Nvidia chips, which are worth their weight in gold for companies developing AI products.
At the center of that network is Shanghai Century Litong, a company linked to Alice Huang’s sister. Founded in June 2023, it was granted preferred cloud partner status by Nvidia just four months later, giving it priority access to Nvidia’s highly coveted AI chips. When orders for export-restricted chips stalled, Alice Huang reportedly used her ties to Nvidia and its distributors to help move about 240,000 H-series and A-series AI chips into China. Some of those chips allegedly ended up serving Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, as well as smaller AI labs.
As for Megaspeed, the company reportedly obtained Nvidia chips by renting computing capacity in Southeast Asian data centers to Chinese customers, and in some cases, by physically shipping the hardware into China. So far, these details have not been officially verified by Nvidia or US agencies. Nvidia, for its part, has said that its board has no reason to believe national security or “Nvidia secrets” were compromised, while China’s foreign ministry has dismissed the spy allegations as baseless.
