"Chinese Female Executive Drinking with Jensen Huang is Information-Gathering Chinese Spy"

It has been revealed that a Chinese government spy approached NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to gather information, and that President Donald Trump took no particular action despite receiving a report on the matter.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 29th, local time, citing multiple sources briefed on the matter, that U.S. intelligence agencies believe a Chinese national named Alice Huang maintained a close relationship with CEO Huang and leaked information to China.

Alice Huang is a senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-headquartered data center company.

Some Chinese materials introduce her as having previously worked as a broadcast journalist in China, after which she worked at major Chinese banks and later at Heشي Capital (HeXi Capital), an investment firm funding semiconductor and AI companies.

While Alice Huang introduced herself externally as the CEO of Megaspeed, company records show that she actually served as a managing director in its early stages and later stepped down from the board of directors.

Megaspeed is a company that purchases NVIDIA chips to build data centers and then leases the computing resources to Chinese firms, and NVIDIA introduces the company as a cloud partner on its website.

An affiliate of the company in Malaysia purchased at least 4.8 billion dollars worth of artificial intelligence equipment containing NVIDIA chips from June 2024 to February of this year, an unusually massive amount for a small company.

U.S. authorities have been investigating Megaspeed since 2024 on suspicion that it may be smuggling some NVIDIA chips restricted from export to China.

This is because on-site inspections by the Department of Commerce revealed that some of the equipment purchased by the company was being stored in its packaged state without being installed in data centers.

Subsequently, while conducting electronic surveillance on Alice Huang, U.S. authorities confirmed that she was in contact with a U.S. citizen.

Through a "unmasking" process to identify who the target was, it was soon revealed that the U.S. citizen was Jensen Huang.

Alice Huang was identified in a LinkedIn social media photo sitting next to Jensen Huang and drinking with him at a bar in Taipei, Taiwan, in June 2024, in the presence of other AI company executives.

She was also spotted leaving a restaurant after a business dinner with Jensen Huang in May of last year, alongside officials from other AI suppliers.

She is also reported to have raised investment funds by boasting about her close ties by posting photos taken with Jensen Huang on her social media.

Alarm bells have gone off at the White House.

This is because Alice Huang may have gathered information regarding NVIDIA technology as well as President Trump's perspective on U.S.-China relations through Jensen Huang.

The NYT pointed out that this issue is highly likely to be on the agenda during President Trump's visit to China next month.

However, President Trump took no separate action despite receiving a report of this nature about a year ago.

This is analyzed as stemming from concerns that disruptions to NVIDIA's semiconductor sales, which drive the U.S. economy and stock market, or complications in trade relations with China could arise.

While U.S. officials judged that Jensen Huang was unaware that Alice Huang was a Chinese government spy, some senior officials within the Trump administration have raised questions over whether he truly did not know, according to the NYT.

U.S. authorities are also known not to have conducted a "defensive briefing" to inform Jensen Huang that he had become a target of a foreign intelligence agency.

Intelligence agencies sometimes forego defensive briefings if doing so risks exposing to the spy that they are under surveillance.

However, the NYT added that it remains unclear which intelligence agency monitored Alice Huang or what specific information she transmitted.

In response, NVIDIA explained that Jensen Huang and Alice Huang share a routine business relationship.

Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo stated, "Meeting with customers is part of a CEO's job, and Jensen talks to thousands of customer executives every year," adding, "We are confident that if the U.S. government had determined that a particular individual posed a threat to U.S. industry, they would have notified us."

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S., dismissed the allegations as "unfounded smears and slanders."

Megaspeed stated, "We take this matter with utmost seriousness and are doing our utmost to ascertain the relevant facts," expressing its stance that it is actively cooperating with the U.S. government investigation.

The White House, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA) declined to comment.

(Photo: Capture of NetThunder LinkedIn post, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.