"Alice Huang's company supplied Nvidia's banned chip"
According to a Bloomberg investigation, the company founded by Alice Huang supplied smuggled Nvidia chips to Megaspeed-connected Shanghai data center.
Quick Look
A Chinese company founded by Alice Huang supplied Nvidia chips, the sale of which Washington has restricted, to a data center in Shanghai, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
Washington restricted the sale of artificial intelligence chips to China in 2023.
The Chinese company founded by Alice Huang supplied smuggled artificial intelligence chips that were installed in a Shanghai data center with ties to Megaspeed International, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg News.
According to the source, some of the servers were initially sold to Aperia Cloud Services, an official Nvidia Cloud Partner headquartered in Singapore.
But instead of remaining in Singapore, the hardware fell into the hands of the Chinese company Alice founded and was used in a massive artificial intelligence facility in Shanghai, according to the documents. According to the news, the project has various connections with Alice. One of these is that Megaspeed, which Alice founded in 2023, used a visual of the data center in question in an investor presentation dated 2024.
According to the news, the documents provide the clearest evidence yet that the vast network of Chinese companies, of which Alice is at the center, managed to access smuggled Nvidia hardware.
According to the report, Aperia purchased 22 servers from Dell containing Nvidia's H800 chips, which Washington restricted from selling to China in 2023. Bloomberg provided the serial numbers of those servers to a person familiar with the details of the transaction, who confirmed that Aperia was Dell's customer.
Dell said in a statement that it "ceased all sales and support activities for Aperia International in February 2025 due to concerns of unauthorized diversion." This is the month that Singapore arrested Aperia's CEO on charges of defrauding server suppliers. The CEO denied the accusations.
In May of that year, Jensen said there was “no evidence” that the chip had changed direction.
Nvidia had previously stated that Aperia was no longer an active customer at the time of its CEO's arrest, and has since removed the company from the public list of NCPs. Aperia, which denied the accusations, declined to comment and did not respond to questions about the hardware's relationship with Alice.
Open Questions
- Who are the other names behind the illegal chip network?
- How will the investigation in Singapore conclude?
