The Tectonic

🇺🇲 🇨🇳 Who is Alice Huang? A New York Times investigation traces the woman at the center of Nvidia's spy scandal from Shanghai finance to the heart of the AI chip race. In December 2023, Alice Huang, whose Chinese name is Huang Le, had dinner with Jensen Huang at an Italian restaurant in Singapore. She had just restructured Megaspeed, a former gaming subsidiary she bought through a British Virgin Islands company and then moved to a Singaporean shell company. Four days after that ownership change, Megaspeed was named an Nvidia cloud partner, the Times reports. US export rules barred Chinese companies from buying advanced AI chips. Megaspeed went on to secure more than $4 billion of Nvidia hardware, and Alibaba became its dominant customer through a Malaysian subsidiary. Authorities took notice. In late 2024, a Commerce Department official inspected a Megaspeed data center and found some Nvidia equipment still in boxes. Taiwan monitored her visits at Washington's suggestion. In 2025, Singapore barred her from leaving the country during a false import declaration probe. A source told the Times the case against her was closed for lack of evidence, and Singapore says it is still investigating Megaspeed. Photos verified by the Times show her with Jensen Huang in Shanghai, at Nvidia's headquarters, at a golf resort in California and in Taiwan. She has since returned to Shanghai. Megaspeed is finishing a data center in Malaysia, with engineers sent by another company in her network. US intelligence has concluded she is a Chinese asset. China denies the espionage claims. She did not respond to the Times, and Nvidia and Megaspeed declined to comment.