Alice Huang and the alleged spy plot targeting Nvidia’s chief

Alice Huang, a former executive of Singapore-based cloud computing company Megaspeed International, has come under scrutiny after The New York Times reported that US intelligence officials believed she had been recruited to gather information on Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang.

The Chinese businesswoman, also known as Huang Le, is not related to Nvidia’s chief executive.

Nvidia’s board announced an independent investigation on November 8, 2026, into reports that Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. The board stated that it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets had been compromised.

China has rejected the spying allegations. Its foreign ministry described them on November 9 as “purely unsubstantiated and directed at smearing China”. Reuters has said it could not independently verify the intelligence claims.

The intelligence allegations

According to The New York Times, a classified memo circulated among senior officials in President Donald Trump’s administration in spring 2026 outlined an intelligence assessment that Alice Huang had been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security.

People briefed on the intelligence told the newspaper that the alleged operation aimed to obtain information about Jensen Huang and US artificial intelligence chips. Another possible objective was to influence Nvidia to press for its most advanced processors to be made available to China.

The allegations sit within the wider competition between the United States and China for leadership in artificial intelligence, which Beijing aims to achieve by 2030.

The Times reported that Trump had been briefed about the matter in 2025 but took no action at that stage. On November 9, Trump told reporters that the FBI was looking into it, without providing further details, according to Reuters.

A career spanning finance and cloud computing

Public accounts of Alice Huang’s early career rely partly on a profile in a Chinese private-fund database. The profile lists reporting roles at Hunan TV and China Central Television, followed by work as assistant to the president of HSBC’s private-banking division and as a vice-president at CITIC Securities.

AFP said it could not verify the contents of the profile. The New York Post reported that a Hunan TV executive had not heard of her, while the newspaper could find no reporting profile under Huang Le’s name on either broadcaster’s website.

Chinese investment records also identify Alice Huang as an executive director and fund manager at Shanghai Hexi Investment Management, which has reported investment links to Chinese gaming company 7Road.

Megaspeed’s corporate history traces back to 7Road International, the Singapore-based overseas business of the gaming group. Reuters, citing company filings, reported that it was incorporated in 2015 and renamed Megaspeed International in March 2023.

Alice Huang was listed as a managing director in 2023. Ownership passed to Huang Le Limited, a company associated with her, before transferring to Singapore-based Swiftdata later that year. Reports indicate that she remained publicly associated with Megaspeed afterwards, although her current role has not been independently established.

Megaspeed operates in the specialised AI cloud market, sometimes called the “neocloud” sector. Its business involves providing access to high-performance Nvidia graphics processing units for training and running AI models.

Bloomberg has described Megaspeed as Nvidia’s largest chip buyer in Southeast Asia. The New York Times reported that the company bought more than US$4.8 billion worth of Nvidia chips over the past two years.

Connections within the AI industry

The date of Alice Huang’s first meeting with Jensen Huang remains unclear. They were photographed together at a bar in Taipei in 2024, when Megaspeed was beginning to purchase advanced AI chips worth billions of dollars, according to Bangkok BizNews.

People who had met Alice Huang described her as a fluent English speaker with connections to senior figures in the AI chip industry, including Jensen Huang and executives at Gigabyte, which manufactures servers using Nvidia chips.

Alice Huang also attended industry conferences and private dinners involving senior executives.

Bangkok BizNews reported that the speed and scale of Megaspeed’s expansion had surprised some industry participants. The report linked Alice Huang to a network of companies and investors in Shanghai and Zhejiang that used relationships with local officials in Shanghai to expand from mobile gaming into data centres.

In his November 8 message to Nvidia employees, Jensen Huang acknowledged that he had been unfaithful to his wife and promised to cooperate with the board’s investigation. The message did not name Alice Huang.

Southeast Asian data centres and Chinese customers

Megaspeed has been developing data centres in Southeast Asia and renting computing capacity to Chinese internet company Alibaba, according to the Bangkok BizNews report. This gives Chinese customers access to computing power from advanced Nvidia processors despite US restrictions on direct chip sales to China.

The report also described financial links between the wider business network and China’s military technology sector through an investment in a cybersecurity subsidiary of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, a major supplier of military technology.

Megaspeed has denied allegations of chip diversion, Bloomberg reported. Reuters reported that there had been no public finding that the company had violated US export controls.

Alice Huang did not respond to The New York Times when it reported on her relationship with Jensen Huang in October. Reuters said on November 10 that it could not determine her whereabouts to seek comment.

Source: Bangkokbiznews