US Intelligence Watched a Megaspeed Executive Close to Nvidia's Jensen Huang, NYT Reports

US intelligence agencies watched Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore cloud company Megaspeed, for about a year as a suspected Chinese intelligence asset, in part because she had grown close to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, The New York Times reported on October 29, 2026, citing people briefed on the surveillance. Nvidia told CNBC that Megaspeed is an ordinary regional cloud customer and that Jensen Huang's contacts with its officials are not unusual.

The report lands while Nvidia is already under scrutiny in Washington over how AI chips and AI companies are policed, from export rules on chips bound for China to a Justice Department inquiry into its planned purchase of Hugging Face. All of the spy claims come from anonymous sources quoted by the Times, and Alice Huang is not related to Jensen Huang, according to Engadget.

What did The New York Times report about Alice Huang?

US intelligence agencies concluded that Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, is a Chinese intelligence asset passing information to Beijing, The New York Times reported on October 29, 2026 (NYT via Engadget and The Decoder). Engadget describes her as a Chinese citizen, and says the surveillance of her turned up contact with an American citizen later identified as Jensen Huang.

The concern, according to sources cited by the Times, was that she had grown close enough to Jensen Huang to gather information about Nvidia's plans and about his efforts to persuade the Trump administration to allow more advanced chip shipments to China (NYT via TechCrunch). Engadget notes that the report does not say what information she may have passed on.

Their contacts were partly public. Alice Huang was photographed next to Jensen Huang at an informal gathering around Computex 2024 in a LinkedIn post by NetThunder, and about a year later the two were seen leaving a restaurant in Taipei with other business associates, according to Tom's Hardware.

Did the White House act on the intelligence?

President Donald Trump was briefed about a year ago and took no action, according to the Times (NYT via The Decoder and Engadget). The paper links that to Trump's wariness about anything that could disrupt Nvidia's chip sales or further strain trade with China, Engadget reports.

Jensen Huang never received a defensive briefing, the warning US counterintelligence sometimes gives Americans targeted by foreign spies, and US officials do not believe he knew about Alice Huang's alleged activities, Tom's Hardware reports, citing the Times. It is unclear whether officials held back to avoid tipping off Alice Huang, who is said to remain under surveillance (NYT via Engadget).

Why was Megaspeed already under suspicion?

Megaspeed had been suspected of helping Chinese companies get around US export controls on Nvidia AI chips before any espionage claim surfaced. In 2025, the Times reported that the US Commerce Department was investigating the company over concerns it resold restricted chips to Chinese buyers, and Alice Huang was then described as a top executive (NYT via TechCrunch).

Megaspeed builds data centers with Nvidia equipment and rents the computing power to Chinese firms such as Alibaba, Tom's Hardware reports. A Commerce Department visit to its Malaysian data center reportedly found ordered Nvidia equipment still in boxes, which raised suspicion it had just arrived or was about to leave. The Times now reports that a Malaysian sister company bought at least $4.8 billion of AI hardware with Nvidia chips between June 2024 and February 2026 (NYT via The Decoder), which it calls an unusual amount for a small, obscure company (NYT via Engadget).

Megaspeed has announced an internal investigation, according to The Decoder. The Chinese embassy in Washington called the allegations "groundless smears and slanders," Tom's Hardware reports.

How did Nvidia respond?

Nvidia said on October 29, 2026 that Megaspeed is one of many regional cloud customers, that such customers receive only ordinary business information, and that the chip diversion allegations against Megaspeed were "thoroughly investigated and debunked last year," according to CNBC. The company added that it is confident the US government would tell it if it saw any person as a threat to American industry.

Jensen Huang also addressed the report himself: Bloomberg's headline says he described his ties to the company under the spying probe as "normal" (paywalled; headline only). Nvidia also argued that the Chinese government is not seeking its products through regional clouds, saying Beijing instead blocked US AI chips. CNBC notes that the US cleared Nvidia's H200 for China earlier in 2026 but Chinese regulators stopped the imports, and that Nvidia wrote off about $4.5 billion of China-specific AI chips last year.

Those two figures come from separate reports but sit on the same scale. The at least $4.8 billion of Nvidia-based hardware the Times attributes to one Megaspeed affiliate (NYT via The Decoder) is larger than the roughly $4.5 billion Nvidia wrote off on chips made for China (CNBC). The comparison is a rough measure of scale, not a finding by either outlet.

What we don't know yet

• What information, if any, Alice Huang obtained or passed on; the open reports do not describe it.
• Why Jensen Huang did not receive a defensive briefing, and whether he will now.
• Whether the Commerce Department or Singapore and Malaysian authorities will take new action against Megaspeed, and what its internal investigation finds.
• What exactly Jensen Huang said in his own comments beyond the Bloomberg headline.