The affair involving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and a Chinese businesswoman suspected of spying for Beijing is said to have helped deliver at least $7.5 billion worth of Nvidia chips to Chinese companies. This amounts to approximately 240,000 GPUs, some of which are subject to U.S. export restrictions.
This is according to sources cited by The Information. The businesswoman in question is Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le. According to two sources who know her, she, along with her husband and sister, built a network of companies in China and Singapore to obtain Nvidia chips. She is said to have used her relationship with the Nvidia CEO to establish credibility. At the same time, she remained vague about her own role and avoided leaving a paper trail.
Nvidia’s board launched an internal investigation on Sunday, while the FBI is looking into whether 63-year-old Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence operation.
Century Litong as the hub
Shanghai Century Litong played a central role. This Chinese company was founded in June 2023 and had already become a preferred cloud partner with Nvidia by October of that year. This granted it priority in chip allocations. Through a founding shareholder, the company was initially linked to Huang Yu, Alice Huang’s sister. That shareholder stepped down in 2024.
When chip orders stalled because of export restrictions, Alice Huang leveraged her ties with Nvidia and distributors. As a result, approximately 240,000 H100, H200, and a few A100 chips reportedly entered China. Century Litong leased computing power and operated data centers using that hardware. According to The Information, some of that hardware ultimately supported Alibaba, Tencent, and smaller Chinese AI labs.
The A100 and H100 had been subject to U.S. export restrictions for Chinese customers for years.
Alice Huang also held a leadership position at the Singapore-based company Megaspeed, which had ties to Century Litong. Megaspeed obtained Nvidia chips by leasing computing power in Southeast Asian data centers to Chinese customers or by physically shipping hardware to China. Equipment from Speedmatrix, a Malaysian subsidiary that Megaspeed founded in 2024, later ended up at Century Litong, according to The Information.
Reuters attempted to verify the report but was unsuccessful. However, The Information has a strong reputation for source-based reporting.