Megaspeed And The High-Stakes Battle To Get Nvidia's Advanced 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.