Suspected woman invests in Chinese AI startup, promises to supply Nvidia semiconductors - US report

[New York Current Affairs] The Information, an American IT media, reported on the 12th that a company affiliated with a woman suspected of spying for the Chinese government against Jensen Huang, who resigned as CEO of the American semiconductor giant Nvidia, recently invested in the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek. The company reportedly promised to supply Nvidia's cutting-edge semiconductors.

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DeepSeek triggered a global stock market sell-off last January when it announced it had developed advanced AI models at a much lower cost than U.S. AI companies. They explained that they used products with inferior performance due to the US government's restrictions on exports of cutting-edge semiconductors to China.

According to reports, the investment was made by a company affiliated with Alice Huang, a woman suspected of being a Chinese agent. It appears that the purpose was to deepen the relationship with Deep Seek and ensure a continuous supply of NVIDIA's cutting-edge semiconductor "Blackwell", which is prohibited from being exported to China.

In a speech in January, former CEO Huang said of Deep Seek's AI, "It's a really exciting initiative. I'm very happy."

According to The Information, DeepSeek employees introduced Alice's affiliated companies to multiple investors when seeking investment between July and October this year. He is said to have explained that the companies affiliated with him should be allocated funding because they are a major supplier of Nvidia's AI chips on the black market.