Jensen Huang Was Target of Suspected Chinese Spy, Report Says
United States officials believe an executive at a Singapore data center firm was gathering information for Beijing while staying close to Nvidia’s chief. Nvidia says no secrets were shared.
WASHINGTON, Oct 30 – Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, was the target of a suspected Chinese spy, according to a report published on Thursday by The New York Times. The paper cited people briefed on the matter.
The report centers on Alice Huang, who is also known as Huang Le. Alice Huang is a Chinese citizen and a senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company that purchases chips from Nvidia. She is not related to Jensen Huang.
According to the report, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Alice Huang is a Chinese intelligence asset who has been passing information to Beijing. The report also found that Alice Huang had built a close relationship with Jensen Huang.
Nvidia pushed back. “Jensen’s interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected,” a company spokesperson told the paper. The spokesperson said meeting customers is part of a chief executive’s job, and that Jensen Huang talks with thousands of customer executives each year.
The company also said its regional cloud customers get only ordinary business information. They don’t get sensitive Nvidia trade secrets, and they get no information that bears on national security, Nvidia said.
Jensen Huang responded personally later on Thursday. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said Nvidia’s dealings with Megaspeed were normal and that the company had verified that Megaspeed did not illegally send its chips to China.
Megaspeed said in a statement that its current leadership takes the matter very seriously and wants to get to the facts. The company said it has hired outside lawyers to carry out a full internal investigation. Alice Huang didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Alice Huang’s current role at Megaspeed is unclear.
The White House, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency all declined to comment. The case grew out of an earlier probe into Megaspeed itself.
Toward the end of the Biden administration, an official from the United States Department of Commerce visited a Megaspeed data center in Malaysia. The official found Nvidia chips sitting in boxes, instead of installed in server racks. That raised suspicions that Megaspeed planned to ship the chips somewhere else, and the Commerce Department opened an investigation.
Megaspeed was set up in 2023 after it split off from a Chinese gaming company. Its Malaysian sister company bought at least $4.8 billion worth of advanced equipment containing Nvidia chips between June 2024 and February 2026, according to trade records cited in the report. The chips went to data centers in Malaysia and Indonesia that appear to serve customers in China remotely.
That isn’t illegal in itself. But it can break the law if it’s done on behalf of a Chinese company. The United States bans exports of its most powerful artificial intelligence chips to China on national security grounds.
The Times first reported on Megaspeed in October 2025. The paper found that Megaspeed’s director, who appears to be the company’s owner, lives in China. Alice Huang has described herself as Megaspeed’s chief executive, and was at one point listed as the company’s managing director. Alice Huang’s name was later removed from that role in Megaspeed’s records.
In June 2024, Alice Huang was photographed sitting next to Jensen Huang at a party in Taipei with other executives from the artificial intelligence industry. A year later, Alice Huang reportedly arranged for Megaspeed to buy about $2 billion worth of Nvidia chips.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department took over the Commerce Department’s investigation. United States intelligence agencies also carried out electronic surveillance of Alice Huang, the report said. That surveillance turned up Alice Huang’s contact with an American citizen, who was later identified as Jensen Huang. The surveillance of Alice Huang is still going on, according to the report.
Officials briefed President Donald Trump about the case roughly a year ago. At the time, officials believed Jensen Huang didn’t know Alice Huang had been gathering information for China. But some of Trump’s senior officials now doubt that Jensen Huang could have been unaware, the report said. Trump took no action after the briefing.
Jensen Huang has also never received a defensive briefing—a warning sometimes issued to Americans believed to be targeted by foreign spies. Officials reportedly withheld one out of concern that it could alert Alice Huang.
Intelligence officials were also worried because Jensen Huang has close access to Trump. The Nvidia chief has become one of the most prominent voices calling for looser restrictions on chip sales to China.
Nvidia has conducted its own review to determine whether any chips it sold to Megaspeed ended up in China. The company said the diversion allegations against Megaspeed were fully investigated last year and found to be false.
Authorities in Singapore are also looking into Megaspeed. The Singapore Police Force confirmed last year that it was investigating Megaspeed over suspected breaches of the country’s laws. Singaporean officials questioned Alice Huang in 2025 and then released her. In Malaysia, which hosts most of Megaspeed’s operations, the government has said its compliance checks found no clear evidence of violations so far.
The case has also drawn attention in Congress. Last year, Republican Senator Tom Cotton asked the Commerce Department to investigate Megaspeed over the alleged diversion of Nvidia chips.
