The United States, Singapore and Taiwan are investigating a possible transfer to China of information about advanced chips made by US company Nvidia. Alice Huang, the former head of Singapore’s Megaspeed International, has come under suspicion. She worked with the chipmaker and had business contacts with its chief executive Jensen Huang, The Wall Street Journal reports.
According to the newspaper, US officials concluded as far back as last year that Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, may have passed information to the Chinese authorities while Megaspeed was working with Nvidia on building data centres in Asia.
Investigators suggested that Chinese intelligence services may have recruited the woman, exploiting information about her close relationship with Jensen Huang. At the same time, the newspaper notes that she is not related to the head of Nvidia.
Separate investigations into Alice Huang’s links to China were carried out by Singapore, where Megaspeed is based, and Taiwan. According to sources cited by The New York Times, she was kept under surveillance for a period. At the end of 2024, when the authorities began monitoring her, she left for China for a time.
It is currently unknown where Huang is and whether she continues to work at Megaspeed.
China’s embassy in Washington rejected the allegations, saying Beijing opposes the spread of a “narrative about Chinese spies”. It also stressed that the country’s technological development is based on its own innovations.
Nvidia said Jensen Huang’s communication with Alice Huang was routine for their business relationship. A company spokesperson said: “We are confident that if the US government believed any individual posed a threat to American industry, we would have been informed.”
Singapore police confirmed that the investigation into Megaspeed is ongoing but declined to provide details. A spokesperson said the country does not enforce other states’ unilateral export restrictions, but it does prosecute companies and individuals who break Singaporean laws or engage in fraud. Taiwan’s representative office in Washington declined to comment on specific intelligence and security matters.
The Alice Huang story is unfolding amid US concerns about the circumvention of export restrictions on advanced microchips. US security experts suggest companies could build data centres in countries neighbouring China and then provide Chinese clients with remote access to computing power. This would effectively allow them to bypass the ban on direct equipment supplies.
At the end of 2024, the US Department of Commerce began checking whether Megaspeed had rerouted Nvidia chips to China in circumvention of export controls. According to sources, that investigation has effectively reached a dead end, and the company is now being handled by the Department of Justice.
At the end of last year, Megaspeed said it had undergone several government inspections that found no evidence of illegal transfers of chips or other wrongdoing. The company described itself as a bona fide and legitimate business.
Megaspeed buys Nvidia chips for data centres in Asian countries, including Malaysia, and then sells computing capacity to technology companies and other clients. The Singaporean company was created in 2023 after the overseas division of one of the Chinese firms was spun off.
Alice Huang held a senior role at Megaspeed. In 2024 and 2025, she was seen with Jensen Huang at public events in Taipei. Nvidia said the photos were taken during meetings involving other Asian partners of the company in the cloud technology sector.
Nvidia chips are among the key US technology products because advanced artificial intelligence systems run on them. Jensen Huang is trying to preserve the company’s access to the Chinese market while also maintaining relations with the administration of US President Donald Trump.
After the start of Trump’s second presidential term, Huang repeatedly urged him and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to ease restrictions on supplies of US chips to China. The Trump administration rolled back some of the export rules introduced under Joe Biden. This has caused discontent among some US officials concerned about national security risks.
Even under the Biden administration, officials began scrutinising Megaspeed’s activities as part of a broader policy to restrict exports of US chips. Huang and other figures in the technology industry criticised these measures, arguing they amounted to excessive state interference.
“Our market share (in China) fell from 95% to 0%. It is hard for me to imagine any politician considering that a successful outcome – when the policy that has been implemented results in America losing one of the largest markets in the world,” Huang said last year at an event hosted by investment firm Citadel.