Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang may have been the target of a spy plot through ‘Chinese intelligence asset,’ report claims — exec from firm under investigation for smuggling banned AI chips to China accused of being a spy, was also feeding information to Beijing
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang may have been the target of a spy plot through ‘Chinese intelligence asset,’ report claims — exec from firm under investigation for smuggling banned AI chips to China accused of being a spy, was also feeding information to Beijing
Multiple sources claim that a top executive at a Singapore AI firm suspected of steering Nvidia AI GPUs to China and who has close business ties with Jensen Huang was apparently passing information to Beijing as a Chinese intelligence asset. According to The New York Times, U.S. intelligence has been aware of her activities for over a year already and has even briefed President Donald Trump on the situation. However, Trump reportedly chose not to do anything about the information, as he apparently did not want to affect Nvidia sales or antagonize China.
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The suspect, Alice Huang or Huang Le, was listed as the managing director of Singaporean AI firm Megaspeed, an Nvidia cloud partner that builds data centers and rents out the compute to Chinese firms like Alibaba. The investigation into the firm began when the U.S. Commerce Department visited the firm’s Malaysia data center and found the Nvidia equipment that it ordered still packed in boxes. This raised suspicion that the machines were either just shipped in or about to be shipped out, instead of being installed on the site. However, it remains unclear what made U.S. intelligence agencies investigate Ms. Huang. Megaspeed was accused of helping smuggle $2 billion worth of Nvidia chips last year.
There have been multiple instances where Ms. Huang was spotted in public with the Nvidia chief. She was photographed sitting beside Jensen Huang alongside other executives in an informal event around Computex 2024 in a LinkedIn post by NetThunder, identified as Megaspeed Chairwoman Alice Wong. About a year later, around the same time as Computex 2025, she was once again seen with Jensen Huang leaving a restaurant in Taipei alongside other business associates.
“Megaspeed has been no different than many other regional cloud customers. Jensen’s interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected. Meetings with customers are part of a CEO’s job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year,” an Nvidia spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware. “Our regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information — not sensitive NVIDIA trade secrets — and zero information relevant to national security.” Still, the possibility that Chinese intelligence is targeting a senior figure close to President Trump is apparently troubling some U.S. officials.
The Chinese embassy in Washington denied the allegations, saying that it was merely “groundless smears and slanders” against China. Nevertheless, it would also make sense for Beijing to keep tabs on senior executives of the top American firms that arguably single-handedly fueled the AI boom. And given Jensen Huang’s status as a celebrity CEO, it’s not surprising that he is surrounded by all kinds of people from both the U.S. and China. Sources cited in the report claimed that Mr. Huang hasn’t yet been given a defensive briefing — a warning that U.S. counterintelligence agencies would sometimes give to American citizens who have been targeted by foreign intelligence services — even though the surveillance against Alice Huang continues. The report speculates it is possible this was done to avoid alerting Alice Huang that she was being investigated.
As for Jensen, U.S. officials do not believe that he is aware of Ms. Huang’s intelligence activities. “We’re confident that if the U.S. government believes that any person is a threat to American industry, it would let us know,” Nvidia told Tom’s Hardware. “We often receive updates from the U.S. government regarding parties and entities of concern and always act accordingly.”
