Policy & Regulation
US investigated possible Chinese spy plot targeting Nvidia's CEO
US intelligence agencies reportedly surveilled a Singapore AI executive for about a year over concerns she could have passed Nvidia-related information to China, sources told the Times.
Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was a top executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based AI cloud firm accused of selling Nvidia chips to China illegally. She was photographed with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at business dinners in the region, and U.S. intelligence agencies surveilled her for about a year to examine her ties to China, the Times reported.
The concern was that she had grown close enough to Jensen Huang that she, the sources said, could have been gathering details about Nvidia’s plans and about the CEO’s push to convince the Trump administration to let the company ship more advanced chips to China.
Nvidia disputed that characterization, telling TechCrunch that Jensen Huang’s contact with the Megaspeed executive was no different from his dealings with any other regional customer. A company spokesperson said: “Our regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information — not sensitive NVIDIA trade secrets — and zero information relevant to national security.”
The Commerce Department investigated Megaspeed in 2025 over suspicions, the Times reported, that it was helping Chinese firms dodge U.S. chip-export rules by reselling restricted hardware — with Alice Huang reported to be a senior executive there at the time.
Why it matters
The episode shows how national-security scrutiny of AI chips now extends to the social circle around industry executives, underscoring Nvidia’s delicate position as it tries to grow sales in China while under Washington’s watch.