Megaspeed and the battle to go high-end Nvidia chips into China

As Nvidia, one of the world's most valuable companies, grapples with CEO Jensen Huang's romantic relationship with an alleged Chinese spy, attention is turning to the much smaller company she worked for.

Alice H., the alleged spy, worked as an executive for Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center and AI computing company. It manages data center access, including for some major Chinese tech firms such as Alibaba.

According to Megaspeed's website as of November 2026, the company advertises itself as an "Nvidia cloud partner", saying it provides "computing power product services covering Nvidia's entire GPU product line." GPU stands for Graphic Processing Unit, a specialized electronic circuit that are in high demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, because they are designed to handle high numbers of parallel mathematical calculations. Megaspeed says it provides access for clients to Nvidia's advanced GB200 NVL72 ​computing system.

This type of firm is often referred to as a "neocloud". It buys Nvidia chips and computing power and then rents it out — in this case, at multiple sites across south-east Asia, to different companies. The US has set up strict export controls to prevent that Nvidia's high-performance chips end up in China, because it sees China as a competitor in the global AI race. It also does not want data centers made up of Nvidia chips to be owned by Chinese companies. It does, however, tolerate that data center compute with Nvidia chips be rented out to Chinese companies like Alibaba, and occasionally allows the export of Nvidia chips for specific purposes.

Megaspeed has bought billions of dollars worth of Nvidia's products in recent years and has been accused of breaching US export controls to divert Nvidia chips into China.

In December 2025, Bloomberg reported that the "once-obscure" Megaspeed had become the biggest buyer of Nvidia's chips in all of south-east Asia and that the US government was investigating its ownership structure and whether or not it was smuggling Nvidia chips into China.

At the same time, Singapore police began an investigation into whether or not Megaspeed had "violated local laws" without specifying which ones. Those investigations are believed to be still ongoing.

On December 23, 2025, Megaspeed strenuously denied any wrongdoing in a statement — which still appears as the first page for visitors to the company's website as of November 2026.

"There has been no evidence of any violations concerning the illicit transfer of chips or any illegal activities, and this demonstrates that we are a compliant and legitimate company," it said. "We operate fully within the bounds of all applicable export control regulations and maintain the highest standards of legal and ethical conduct."

The US government investigation began in 2024. The Commerce Department initially began looking into Megaspeed, but the US Justice Department has since taken over. According to the New York Times, this switch came about after an Nvidia executive directly contacted the Commerce Department about the investigation.

Megaspeed was founded in 2015 and was originally called 7Road International. It changed its name to Megaspeed in March 2023. It is owned by the Singapore-registered Swiftdata, which was set up in October 2023.

Its rise in prominence coincided with a sharp increase in assets, which increased from $33 million in 2023 to $3 billion in 2024.

Alice H., the woman accused of being a Chinese spy, had an affair with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. She is widely seen as an influential figurehead at Megaspeed. She also served as the company's managing director of Megaspeed for eight months in 2023.

The Financial Times reported on Monday that Alice H. leveraged her close access to Jensen Huang and Nvidia to pitch AI chips deals to Chinese investors.

The newspaper said that in early 2025, Alice H. sought investment in China for a data center project in south-east Asia, and cited their easy access to Nvidia chips and close relationship with Alibaba.

Alibaba lent money to Megaspeed in June 2024, via subsidiaries. It has remained Megaspeed's largest client, according to reporting by the Financial Times.

In December 2025, Nvidia said its own inquiry into Megaspeed had found no evidence of chips being diverted and that the company was fully owned and operated outside of China, with no Chinese shareholders. The company told Bloomberg at the time that it had visited Megaspeed's facilities on multiple occasions and had seen nothing untoward.

Megaspeed is one of several companies accused of smuggling Nvidia's chips into China or finding ways to give Chinese companies access to them.

Nvidia's high-performance chips are seen as essential for companies looking for the most advanced form of supercomputing to use and develop various AI applications.

Back in 2022, the Biden Administration began severely restricting the sale of the US's most advanced chips to China, part of the two countries' growing rivalry to achieve AI dominance.

However, an illegal smuggling and underground network was soon set up, with many vendors operating to get the chips into China and selling them on to companies there.

In December 2025, US authorities shut down the operations of Hao Global, a US-based shell company with links to China which plead guilty to smuggling Nvidia chips to China.

In June 2026, Taiwanese government agencies raided the offices of Super Micro Computer as part of an investigation into the smuggling of Nvidia chips to China.

While export restrictions have been eased significantly under the Trump administration, there are still significant blocks and restrictions on the most advanced Nvidia chips.

In December 2025, the Trump administration approved several Chinese companies to buy or handle advanced Nvidia H200 chips, a move that sparked significant concern among the US security establishment.

However, that deal has not led to a significant flow of Nvidia chips moving legally to China, amid strict US licencing controls and official reluctance from Beijing to publicly promote Nvidia chips to the detriment of its own alternatives.

Editor's note: DW follows the German press code, which stresses the importance of protecting the privacy of suspects, victims and those who are associated with a criminal case, and urges the media to refrain from publishing their full identities in most cases.