Jensen Huang Megaspeed and the Nvidia Chip Smuggling Probe
by: Marcus Webb

Jensen Huang, Megaspeed and the Nvidia Chip Smuggling Probe

Commerce Department investigators had spent months building a case that Megaspeed, a Singapore data center company and one of Nvidia’s biggest customers in Southeast Asia, was smuggling Nvidia’s AI chips into China. In August 2025, Nvidia’s general counsel, Tim Teter, emailed them asking about it. The New York Times reported on Monday, Nov. 9, that Teter wrote that a senior Commerce official, Jeff Kessler, had given him permission to get in touch. The Justice Department later asked Commerce to stop its work and hand the case over, and it is now running a criminal investigation of Megaspeed, according to the Times.

The investigators turned down Nvidia’s request for a meeting, the Times reported, as relayed by Investing.com and Seeking Alpha. They sent the email chain to Kessler, who oversees the department’s export-control operations and reports directly to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He told them to keep handling the case by the book. A Commerce official told the Times that Kessler never directed anyone to share information with Nvidia or interfered in investigators’ decisions. The Times report contains no evidence that Kessler ordered the inquiry halted or that Nvidia changed its outcome, Investing.com noted.

Nvidia says it regularly passes information from the field to authorities, asks for guidance and works with them to stop suspected smuggling while keeping lawful sales going, according to the same report.

A blacklist that hasn’t grown in a year

The Times also found that the Commerce Department has not added a single company to its Entity List, the export blacklist that bars U.S. firms from selling to listed buyers without a license, in more than a year. That is the longest such stretch in 18 years, the Times reported.

The company bought nearly $2 billion of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips through a Malaysian subsidiary, the Times has reported, according to IBTimes. It imported billions of dollars of Nvidia equipment into Malaysia while building data centers to serve Chinese clients, Alibaba among them, Investing.com reported, citing the Times. Megaspeed was first registered in Singapore in 2015 under the name 7Road International and took its current name in March 2023, IBTimes reported. Sen. Tom Cotton has described it as a spin-off of a Chinese government-owned company called 7Road, and asked Lutnick to investigate its ownership and ties to U.S. chipmakers, according to IBTimes’ account of his letter. Cotton’s office has also pointed to near-empty offices in Malaysia and Singapore and a Malaysian data center where U.S. chips were still in their boxes.

Megaspeed denies wrongdoing. It says inspections by the Commerce Department, Malaysia’s trade ministry and Nvidia found no violations, and that its offers to cooperate with the U.S. government went unanswered, CNBC reported. No government agency has published findings either way. Singapore police say they are investigating the company for suspected breaches of Singapore law, IBTimes reported.

The intelligence finding that hasn’t been published

Megaspeed came to wider attention on Oct. 29, when the Times reported that U.S. intelligence had concluded one of its executives, Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was an asset of China’s Ministry of State Security. A memo saying so circulated among Trump administration officials last spring, the Times reported, according to Newsweek and CNBC. People briefed on the intelligence told the Times she had been recruited to gather information on Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, and possibly to influence the company on China’s access to advanced chips, Global News reported. The memo itself has not been released, and no U.S. agency has commented on it publicly. Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry said on Oct. 31 that it had not investigated Alice Huang, according to IBTimes. China has denied the allegations, IBTimes reported.

Jensen Huang called his dealings with her “completely normal and not unusual,” and related to Megaspeed, in remarks to Bloomberg on Oct. 29, Taiwan News reported. On Nov. 8, he told Nvidia employees in a letter that he had been unfaithful to his wife and was deeply sorry, Global News reported. The Times reported the affair was with Alice Huang. Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation, overseen by a committee of independent directors with outside counsel. It said it had “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised,” CNBC reported. Jensen Huang has said Alice Huang is no longer with Megaspeed, according to IBTimes.

A closed-door briefing on Nov. 18

The chairmen of three House committees, Brian Mast of Foreign Affairs, John Moolenaar of the Select Committee on the CCP and Rick Crawford of Intelligence, wrote to Jensen Huang on Nov. 4 asking him to appear at a joint closed-door briefing. The letter asks him to discuss Nvidia’s protections against foreign espionage and his interactions with what it calls a “publicly reported” Chinese intelligence asset, Alice Huang. It sets the briefing for Nov. 18 in room 2172 of the Rayburn House Office Building and asks him to accept or propose another date by Nov. 11. The letter does not mention Megaspeed’s chip purchases or the Commerce investigation.

The Justice Department has not commented on its Megaspeed investigation, and no charges have been filed.

Sources

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