Documents provide proof: Company founded by Alice Huang purchased smuggled AI chips

At the center of the Nvidia affair is the company Megaspeed, alongside a suspected Chinese spy. High-performance chips from Nvidia are said to have reached China despite a US export ban. There is now evidence of Alice Huang's role - albeit from a different company.

Until now it was just a suspicion. The Bloomberg news agency has now been able to use documents to establish that a Chinese company associated with Alice Huang actually received smuggled AI chips from Nvidia. Huang is the woman who US authorities accuse of spying for Chinese intelligence and with whom ex-Nvidia boss Jensen Huang had an affair.

According to Bloomberg, Shanghai Longteng Intelligent Computing, founded by Alice Huang, obtained high-performance chips from Nvidia that were installed in a data center in Shanghai. The data center also has connections to the Singapore-based company Megaspeed, where Alice Huang was an executive and which she also founded. Megaspeed is also suspected of having smuggled Nvidia chips past US export controls into China. The US Secret Service is investigating Alice Huang. The USA had banned the export of particularly powerful Nvidia chips in the global AI race.

According to the report, Nvidia chips smuggled to Shanghai Longteng were in Dell servers, some of which were originally sold to an Nvidia partner called Aperia Cloud Services, headquartered in Singapore, as Bloomberg reported, citing an insider. From there, according to the documents, they made their way to China. Alice Huang is said to be at the center of an entire network of Chinese companies through which the smuggling of high-performance chips was carried out.

According to the report, Alice Huang sold her shares in Shanghai Longteng in 2017. This was taken over by Huang Yu, who the portal The Information identified as Alice Huang's sister.

Kang Wei apparently has a managerial position at a company that financially supported the data center in Shanghai and was at times introduced as Alice Huang's life partner, it is said. She also once worked there. Neither could be reached for comment by Bloomberg, nor could the companies involved.