A Chinese company founded by Alice Huang purchased smuggled AI chips. Alice Huang made headlines last week due to a romantic relationship with Jensen Huang, the former CEO of Nvidia. The chips were installed in a data center in Shanghai with ties to Megaspeed.
This is evident from documents reviewed by Bloomberg. According to a source who wishes to remain anonymous, some of the servers were originally sold to Aperia Cloud Services. This is an official Nvidia Cloud partner headquartered in Singapore. The hardware subsequently ended up at a company in Shanghai founded by Alice Huang.
The documents reveal an extensive network of Chinese companies, with Huang at the center, that managed to acquire smuggled Nvidia hardware through an Nvidia Cloud partner.
According to Bloomberg, this constitutes a violation of U.S. trade restrictions. This raises further questions about the relationship between Nvidia’s former CEO, Jensen Huang, and Alice Huang.
Dell severed ties due to possible chip smuggling
Aperia purchased 22 Dell servers equipped with Nvidia’s H800 chips. The U.S. prohibits the export of these chips to China. Dell stated in a release that it halted all sales and support to Aperia International in February 2025 due to concerns about chip smuggling. In May of that year, Jensen Huang said there was no evidence of chips being diverted.
Nvidia has previously stated that Aperia was no longer an active customer at the time of the arrest of Aperia’s CEO and has since removed the company from its public list of NCPs. Aperia, which denies any wrongdoing, declined to comment by phone on Thursday and did not respond to questions sent by email regarding the hardware and its ties to Alice Huang.
According to Bloomberg, documents filed with Chinese authorities show that a subsidiary of Shanghai Longteng used a total of 193 servers as collateral for loans in January 2025. Shanghai Longteng is a Chinese company founded by Alice Huang in 2015. In addition to the 22 Dell servers, the collateral included 52 Super Micro systems equipped with Nvidia H100 and H200 chips. The export of these chips to China is also prohibited without a U.S. license.
According to Bloomberg, the documents confirm that the hardware was indeed located in the Shanghai data center. Previous indications of ties between the data center and Megaspeed were primarily based on investor presentations and other corporate information. Megaspeed is under investigation by U.S. authorities for alleged chip smuggling to China. Alice Huang’s personal involvement in the purchase of the servers has not been established. She sold her shares in Shanghai Longteng back in 2017.