Megaspeed’s $4.8 Billion Nvidia Chip Purchases Draw Scrutiny

By Daniel Okafor

Megaspeed bought $4.8 billion worth of Nvidia chips over two years, according to The New York Times. The Singapore-based AI infrastructure company drew U.S. and Singaporean scrutiny over suspected chip diversion to China.

U.S. officials believe Jensen Huang’s likely romantic interest, Alice Huang, is a Chinese spy who has fed information to Beijing. The Times stressed that Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen, has no family relationship to Jensen Huang. Her contact with Nvidia’s 63-year-old co-founder and CEO now overlaps with an export-control case.

The Times placed the affair within the U.S.-China race to build advanced AI infrastructure, a contest that could shape economic growth, military power, and future innovation capacity. Nvidia ranks among the world’s largest AI-chip makers, and its chips accelerate AI development. U.S. rules bar sales of its most powerful chips to Chinese entities.

What did Jensen Huang admit?

On November 8, 2026, in a letter to Nvidia employees that the company also published as a press release, Huang admitted cheating on his wife of 40 years.

“I owe my family and all of you an apology,” Huang wrote. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”

In the same letter, Huang did not name Alice Huang. He linked his infidelity to “the national security concerns raised in news reports.”

Huang also wrote: “Nvidia’s Board of Directors has initiated an independent investigation. I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.”

The New York Times reported that Nvidia shares fell more than 5% the following day.

What did Trump and Congress do?

On November 8, President Donald Trump defended Huang without claiming knowledge of the case. “I have not spoken to him about it. I just know he’s a fine person, but you never know what’s going on,” Trump said.

Asked whether Huang should remain Nvidia’s chief, Trump said: “I think so. Oh yeah, sure.”

On November 5, Republican chairmen John Moolenaar of the House Select Committee on China, Brian Mast of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rick Crawford of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence requested a closed-door joint briefing.

They wrote: “Recent reports raise significant national security concerns regarding the [People’s Republic of China]’s access to sensitive U.S. technology and information.”

They added: “The issue of PRC infiltration and access to cutting-edge U.S. technology is core to the investigative work of our three committees this Congress. It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which U.S. national security has been placed at risk.”

How large was the chip network?

On November 9-10, The Information reported that Alice Huang and her family built a network of companies across China and Singapore to acquire Nvidia chips through multiple entities. They founded Shanghai Century Litong in 2023. It became a Nvidia preferred cloud partner, with priority access to chips.

The Information separately reported that Shanghai Century Litong facilitated $7.5 billion in Nvidia chip purchases, including banned chips.

The Information’s account described a structure like a purchasing bridge over a cloud-rental business. Shanghai Century Litong helped secure chips, while Megaspeed rented computing power.

Separately, the Financial Times reported that Alice Huang and a business partner sought China-based investors for an Asian data center in early 2025. They promised investors that securing GPUs would present no problem.

Bloomberg reported Nvidia head lawyer Tim Teter intervened in a 2025 U.S. government probe into suspected smuggling by Megaspeed International. Teter contacted Commerce Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler and asked whether the Trump administration had played a role in detaining Alice Huang.

On November 9, Huang withdrew from upcoming speaking slots at the ElevenLabs Summit and Anthropic CEO Forum.

When did officials learn about the relationship?

The New York Times broke the story on October 29, 2026, after U.S. officials had investigated Alice Huang and Megaspeed for more than a year, disclosing the executives’ close relationship.

Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo said: “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.”

Rizzo added that “if the U.S. government believes that any person is a threat to American industry, it would let us know.”

The Times later reported that a secret memo circulated among Trump administration policymakers in spring 2026. It called Alice Huang a spy for China’s Ministry of State Security. Secretary of State Marco Rubio supervised the memo’s drafting.

The Times also reported that Trump received a late-2025 intelligence briefing on surveillance findings and Alice Huang’s relationship with Jensen Huang. He did not act. Huang, a Trump ally, had repeatedly urged the government to let Nvidia expand in China.

What did the Megaspeed probes find?

In October 2025, U.S. and Singaporean governments confirmed investigations into Megaspeed, a neocloud whose Nvidia-based computing services had raised export-control concerns, The Times reported. The neocloud rented computing power to Alibaba and other Chinese companies.

A Commerce Department official who visited Megaspeed’s Malaysian data center in 2024 found a hoard of Nvidia equipment still packed in boxes. The concern was that the equipment would ship directly to China rather than be installed and sold as a cloud service.

The Times reported that Huang had socialized with Alice Huang in Taiwan in 2024, where he was born. Nvidia said it did not have “any reason to believe products had been diverted,” a spokesperson told the press at the time.

A Nvidia spokesperson said: “NVIDIA visited multiple Megaspeed sites yet again earlier this week and confirmed what we previously observed — Megaspeed is running a small commercial cloud, like many other companies throughout the world, as allowed by U.S. export control rules.”

The coming board investigation and congressional briefing will test how Nvidia’s customer controls handled a relationship at the center of an alleged espionage case.