Nvidia Scandal Puts Singapore's Chip Hub Role Under Pressure

Jensen Huang's resignation from Nvidia on Thursday, after admitting an affair with a woman who ran a major buyer of the company's chips, has dragged Singapore's role as a global semiconductor hub into a US export-control investigation.

The woman, Alice Huang, ran Singapore-based data centre company Megaspeed — the biggest buyer of Nvidia chips in South East Asia and now the subject of suspected fraud probes in both Singapore and the United States.

Singapore mattered enormously to Nvidia's business. Last year it ranked as the company's second-largest billing centre globally, accounting for nearly a fifth of Nvidia's revenue. Yet less than 1% of those earnings covered chips that physically entered Singapore. The island serves as an ordering hub for Asian companies that route hardware elsewhere.

Why does the US care about Singapore chip flows?

Since 2022, Washington has barred advanced American semiconductors from export to China or purchase by Chinese companies. US officials have worried that Chinese firms could use third countries such as Singapore to gain access to restricted chips.

Megaspeed fits that pattern, investigators suspect. It built data centres in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, and is suspected of giving Chinese companies backdoor access to Nvidia chips through them.

Singapore does not ban the transfer of advanced AI chips abroad, but such transfers can breach US export controls. The government says it does not enforce "unilateral export controls imposed by other countries" but expects all companies in its jurisdiction to respect such regulations.

What has Singapore actually done?

The city-state has charged four companies and five individuals, including Chinese nationals, for offences including fraud. Those cases followed US concerns that Chinese AI company DeepSeek had been buying Nvidia chips from third parties in Singapore and elsewhere.

The Megaspeed probe has moved slower. In a statement on Thursday, the government said that since February 2025 it had examined whether Megaspeed and other firms made false declarations about data servers bought and exported through Singapore. The companies said the equipment was bound for Malaysia, but authorities suspect the final destinations lay elsewhere.

Singapore said it sought help from US authorities several times to obtain information from one investigated company — Supermicro, a US-based server supplier to Megaspeed, according to the BBC. "Despite these repeated requests, Singapore has to date received limited information or assistance," the government said.

Authorities also investigated Alice Huang — not for espionage, but for any role in Megaspeed's suspected fraud. They found "insufficient evidence" of crime and let her leave Singapore in February this year after holding her passport for several months. Nearly two years after launching the probe, Singapore has filed no charges against Megaspeed or linked companies and individuals. Investigations continue.

In 2024, US officials visited a Megaspeed data centre in Malaysia and saw Nvidia technology still in its boxes, the New York Times reported — raising concerns the chips were being shipped on elsewhere. Megaspeed appeared to have imported 50,000 more chips than Nvidia could account for, Bloomberg reported; Nvidia later adjusted its figures after visiting more warehouses.

Megaspeed says it has always acted lawfully and that previous inspections found no wrongdoing. On Thursday it said it "welcomes appropriate government scrutiny" and is "committed to working constructively and transparently with the US government".

What is 'Singapore-washing'?

Corporate records reviewed by the BBC show Alice Huang sold a gaming company and its subsidiaries to Chinese gaming firm 7Road in 2019. In March 2023, a 7Road subsidiary in Singapore named her executive director — and changed its name to Megaspeed the next day.

She ran the company for eight months before transferring it to a Singaporean man. C4ADS, a Washington-based security analysis group, said her tenure covered "a critical period of corporate restructuring and regional expansion" and that her ties raised questions over whether "Megaspeed's Singaporean identity is genuine or effectively Chinese-controlled". C4ADS assessed she remained "practically in control" afterward, citing a linked company and LinkedIn posts where she still called herself Megaspeed's "chairwoman". Megaspeed did not answer BBC queries about its links to China. China rejects accusations that its firms illegally obtain US chips.

NYU law adjunct professor Winston Ma says Singapore offers Chinese firms a "neutral address" that global customers accept. Singapore's openness has attracted TikTok and Manus as global headquarters.

Can Singapore keep balancing?

Singapore has long avoided taking sides. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong insists the country is "pro-Singapore", neither pro-China nor pro-America. "For the longest time, Singapore has managed to enjoy the best of both worlds with excellent relations with US and China," said Dylan Loh, a lecturer at Nanyang Technological University. That balancing act, he said, "has now fast become very difficult to manage and sometimes quite fraught too".

Beijing may question why Singapore investigates issues tied to US restrictions, while Washington could read Singapore's statement as "pushing blame", said Chong Ja Ian of Carnegie China. "By not choosing a side, they run the risk of being seen as complicit," he said.

Benjamin Ho of Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies put it bluntly: "This is the price that an open economy has to grapple with — you get caught in the middle when things turn sour."