It has been revealed that a suspected Chinese government spy approached Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to gather intelligence, and that U.S. President Donald Trump took no significant action after being briefed 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 an individual of Chinese nationality named Alice Huang has 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. She subsequently worked at major Chinese banks and later at Heshi Capital, an investment firm funding semiconductor and AI companies.

While Alice Huang introduced herself externally as the CEO of MegaSpeed, company records show she actually served as a managing director during its early founding stage and has since stepped down from the board.

MegaSpeed is a company that purchases Nvidia chips to build data centers and then leases the computing resources to Chinese firms. Nvidia lists the company as a cloud partner on its website.

A Malaysian affiliate of the company purchased at least 4.8 billion dollars worth of AI 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 over suspicions that it may be smuggling some Nvidia chips banned from export to China into the country.

This came to light during Department of Commerce on-site inspections, which revealed that some of the equipment purchased by the company was being stored in its original packaging 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 "identity unmasking" process to determine the target's identity, it was soon revealed that the U.S. citizen was Jensen Huang.

Photos posted on the social media platform LinkedIn confirmed that Alice Huang sat next to Jensen Huang and drank 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 with Jensen Huang after a business dinner in May of last year, alongside representatives from other AI suppliers.

She reportedly boasted of her close ties by posting photos with Jensen Huang on her social media to raise investment funds.

The White House has been thrown into high alert.

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

The NYT noted that this issue is likely to be on the agenda when President Trump visits China next month.

However, President Trump took no separate action after receiving such a briefing about a year ago.

This is analyzed to be due to concerns over disrupting semiconductor sales by Nvidia, which drives the U.S. economy and stock market, or complicating trade relations with China.

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

U.S. authorities reportedly did not issue a "defensive briefing" to inform Jensen Huang that he had become a target of a foreign intelligence agency.

Intelligence agencies sometimes withhold defensive briefings if doing so could expose the fact that they are conducting surveillance on the spy.

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

In response, Nvidia explained that Jensen Huang and Alice Huang shared a standard business relationship.

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

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the United States, dismissed the allegations as "unfounded smears and slander."

MegaSpeed stated, "We take this matter with the utmost seriousness and are doing our utmost to ascertain the relevant facts," adding 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)