Megaspeed's vacant offices raise questions about ties to Nvidia, China

Résumé détaillé

The unusual global footprint of Megaspeed, a major buyer of Nvidia's powerful AI computer chips, is fueling questions about whether it's a front for the Chinese government.

The unusual global footprint of Megaspeed International, the Singapore-based company at the center of the Nvidia Chinese spy scandal, is fueling questions about whether it's a front for the Chinese government.

One of Megaspeed's leaders is Alice Huang, the woman with whom Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was having an affair, and who is suspected by U.S. intelligence of being an asset of China's Ministry of State Security. In the past three years, Megaspeed, formerly a gaming company, has been one of Nvidia's biggest foreign customers, purchasing nearly $5 billion in AI chips and advanced hardware, The New York Times first reported.

And yet Megaspeed's corporate headquarters sat practically empty, according to The Straits Times, an English-language newspaper in Singapore. Questions have also been raised about its outposts in Australia and Malaysia.

Published reports in recent days revealed that the company listed a newspaper vendor as the director of its Australian subsidiary, and one of its Malaysia offices consisted of a dilapidated storefront outside Kuala Lumpur. Yet another Malaysia office was tucked into a shopping mall.

Megaspeed began as an offshoot of a China-based gaming firm and grew into a juggernaut by gaining access to restricted Nvidia AI computer chips. U.S. investigators say that Alice Huang used her contacts in the industry and a series of shell companies to gain access to 240,000 chips banned for export into China. Now it is being probed in both the U.S. and Singapore for allegedly smuggling those chips into China.

President Trump said this week the FBI is also investigating romantic and business ties between Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang and Alice Huang (who are not related).

Earlier this week, Jensen Huang, who is married, apologized for the affair in a statement to Nvidia's employees. The company launched an independent investigation of the matter, and an Nvidia shareholder filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday alleging that Huang concealed a…

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