Spies and silicon chips: Alice Huang's tangled web

SINGAPORE - The Singapore-based tech group Megaspeed dealt in billions of dollars’ worth of the world’s most advanced AI chips, but its office was an empty shell when AFP visited, its staff seemingly vanished long before claims of espionage landed at their door.

Megaspeed’s former director Alice Huang was this week outed as an alleged Chinese spy, accused of having an affair with Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang while digging up company secrets for Beijing.

Details about Alice Huang’s life are vague, making it almost impossible to pin down where she lives, where she works, or when she was born.

But her influence undoubtedly spreads far and wide, from the nondescript Singapore office, to hulking data centres in Southeast Asia, to the gleaming boardrooms of Silicon Valley.

Her connection to the cloud computing firm Megaspeed sits at the centre of the scandal.

Megaspeed touts itself as a company at the heart of the AI revolution, using Nvidia’s advanced silicon chips to power high-performance computing inside vast data centres.

But it is also under investigation for serving a murkier purpose.

Under the guise of buying computer hardware for its Southeast Asia data hubs, Megaspeed has allegedly helped Beijing skirt trade restrictions by sending Nvidia chips into China.

Beijing has denied allegations of spying, and Megaspeed said it was investigating if it had complied with export controls on the sensitive chips.

At Megaspeed’s office in the heart of the Singapore business district, no staff could be seen behind its locked glass doors. Neighbours told AFP they had not seen anyone come or go for the past few months.

Likewise in a mall at a newly developed neighbourhood in Johor, the Malaysian region a bridge away from Singapore, no employees were around in subsidiary Speedmatrix’s office.

Singapore police opened an investigation in February 2025 into Megaspeed and several other companies suspected of circumventing or violating export controls.

Alice Huang was interviewed as part of Singapore’s probe.

Although no charges were laid, she was barred from the city-state in February 2026 for providing inaccurate information to “downplay her role in Megaspeed”, Singapore’s home ministry said.

The logo of the data centre company Megaspeed International is seen at its office in the Ocean Financial Centre in Singapore on Nov 10, 2026. (Photo: AFP)

Explosive growth

Corporate records show Huang’s direct involvement in the birth of Megaspeed.

A company linked to her acquired the Singapore arm of Chinese video game developer 7Road International in early 2023, the records showed.

Almost immediately, the 7Road name was ditched and changed to Megaspeed International.

Huang was listed as a Megaspeed director for less than a year, taking the role between March and November 2023.

Her arrival coincided with a drastic change in fortunes, as Megaspeed pivoted from a little-known video game maker to one of Asia’s biggest buyers of Nvidia chips.

Within 12 months, Megaspeed’s revenue jumped from 300 million, according to company accounts filed in 2024.

Megaspeed — which described itself as a “cloud hosting services provider” — saw the value of its assets skyrocket from $32 million to almost $3 billion over the same period.

Just one of Nvidia’s advanced AI computer chips can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Over two years, Megaspeed reportedly traded in upwards of $4 billion worth of Nvidia chips.

A financial trail weaving through Singapore, Malaysia and the Cayman Islands suggests Megaspeed’s business may have been boosted by a connection to Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

Megaspeed has a Malaysian subsidiary that struck a deal in 2024 pledging assets to Apex Enterprise Solutions in Singapore as security in case of contractual breaches.

Apex is linked through a parent company to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, a firm registered in the Cayman Islands, Singapore corporate data shows.

By that time, Huang was no longer registered as a director at Megaspeed.

But Singapore authorities said she remained one of Megaspeed’s “key controllers”.

Megaspeed’s ultimate holding company is a Singapore firm called Swiftdata.

Singapore businessman Tan Yong Pong — who has previously run printing and graphic design companies — is a director of both Megaspeed and Swiftdata.

No one answered when AFP visited Tan’s registered address in eastern Singapore, although dogs could be heard barking behind the door.

“They are friendly. I occasionally bump into the lady at the lift landing when she’s walking her dog,” an elderly neighbour told AFP. “But we have not seen them for months.”

Awkward questions

In June 2025, US investigators turned up at Megaspeed to carry out a “post-shipment verification”, with Huang present, according to Singapore’s home ministry, adding that it was the first time it found out about Washington’s probe.

That same day, Huang was interviewed by Singapore police who impounded her passport.

By then, she and Nvidia boss Jensen Huang had already been spotted together in public.

In one of their early outings together, they were seen mingling at an afterparty following the Computex trade show in Taiwan at the beginning of 2024.

Trump was briefed on the intelligence findings about their relationship well before it exploded into a public scandal, but said Sunday he did not regret not acting on it.

“No, I don’t think so. I think — you know, he’s an honorable guy,” Trump said.

But the scandal has sparked national security fears.

China and the United States are fighting for supremacy in artificial intelligence, and Nvidia’s market-leading products have become a major point of contention.

Nvidia controls an estimated 90 percent of the market for the chips used to train and run AI models, and the US imposed rules in 2022 to restrict their sales to China.

In the past years, Jensen Huang has emerged as the leading tech boss urging Trump to lift those curbs.

In any case, the restrictions appear to have been widely circumvented.

A Chinese university tied to the nation’s defence establishment was able to buy advanced Nvidia chips, according to procurement notices from October and September.

Singapore’s probe into Megaspeed is ongoing. Separately, Malaysia said Friday it is investigating the company’s subsidiary Speedmatrix to determine if chips imported into the country had been exported to other jurisdictions.

Megaspeed itself said it has retained a US lawfirm to examine its compliance.

“Megaspeed takes its compliance obligations under US export control laws extremely seriously,” it said.

Tangled webs

Alice Huang sits in the middle of a corporate web, connected to myriad shell companies, investment houses and major Chinese technology firms.

Corporate records filed in Hong Kong list her as a director of Nanjing Lingxing Technology, which operates the popular T3 ride hailing platform in China.

Other notable investors in Nanjing Lingxing Technology include Alibaba and Tencent, as well as state-backed carmakers like China FAW and Dongfeng Motor Group.

A corporate CV published by a Chinese investment firm details Huang’s rapid ascent through the ranks of Asian investment banking.

She served in a senior role at HSBC sometime around 2012, the resume claims, before moving on to stints at CITIC Securities and Shanghai Hexi Investment.

Singapore business filings described her as a Chinese citizen with a Hong Kong passport.

She was born in China’s landlocked Hunan province, which she left to study media in Hong Kong, HK01 media reported.

A CCTV reporter wrote on Weibo that she worked with Huang at the Chinese broadcaster, but later deleted the post.