Alleged Chinese spy at centre of Nvidia firestorm is in Beijing

THE suspected Chinese spy at the heart of a scandal that threatens to take down Nvidia Corp. chief executive officer Jensen Huang has returned to her home country, people familiar with the matter said.

Megaspeed International founder Alice Huang is currently living in Beijing with the knowledge of security officials, one of the people said, asking to remain anonymous to discuss a sensitive situation. It wasn’t immediately clear when or why she travelled to the capital, nor what she may be engaged in, the people said. 

Alice Huang’s whereabouts have been the topic of intense speculation since Nvidia’s founder admitted to an extra-marital affair and the company’s board began an investigation into allegations she’s a Chinese spy.

Known also as Huang Le, the former journalist who became a power broker renting advanced chips to the nation’s top firms was the catalyst for a controversy that roiled markets and may now result in Jensen Huang’s ouster.

Beijing has denied that the woman was a spy. China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Alice Huang first came into the CEO’s orbit after founding Megaspeed, the largest buyer of Nvidia’s chips in South-east Asia — a major route for smuggling the firm’s advanced hardware into China.

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She oversaw the incredible ascent of a fledgling neocloud, which rose to become one of Nvidia’s most important partners in the regional data centre boom. Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful on Thursday.

Online posts and publicly available information have provided the broad contours of Megaspeed’s rise, and the critical role she played in that.

She founded Megaspeed in 2023 following a career in private equity and television. The company was spun off from one of China’s largest video game enterprises, 7Road Holdings, just months after former US President Joe Biden imposed sweeping restrictions on shipments of advanced AI chips to China. 7Road first sold its Singapore subsidiary to a British Virgin Islands entity called Huang Le Ltd, and Huang Le assumed control. 

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In November 2023, Huang Le Ltd sold Megaspeed to a Singapore shell company. Days after the sale, the firm was designated an official Nvidia Cloud Partner — a highly coveted status that granted it preferred chip access from a company that plays kingmaker to the industry.

Trade records show that Megaspeed has since imported goods worth more than a thousand times its cash balance in 2023. Its imports of Nvidia products have topped US$4.6 billion.

At multiple facilities in South-east Asia, the company rents Nvidia chips to Alibaba Group, itself a recent subject of US national security concerns. The AI and e-commerce company, which has denied Washington’s allegations of ties to China’s military, has declined to comment on the relationship.

Alice Huang got her start in finance before getting into the neocloud business. She served as vice-general manager of Shanghai Hexi Investment since November 2015, the fund house said in a few posts on its official WeChat account in late 2016 and early 2017. Previously, she held roles at Citic Securities and HSBC, according to Hexi posts.

HSBC and Citic Securities representatives didn’t respond to Bloomberg requests for comment, while Hexi wasn’t immediately available when reached by phone. BLOOMBERG