Alice Huang, from the Shanghai financial sector to the heart of Nvidia: who is the whistleblower at the centre of the Jensen Huang scandal?

Kang had made a name for himself in the 2000s as a rising star in Chinese finance, distinguishing himself as a stock market strategist. He subsequently moved into private equity, investing in the online video games sector as well. His career has been marked by a number of controversies: the Chinese financial markets regulator has fined him at least twice for failing to declare shareholdings in listed companies.

The earliest corporate records linking Huang to a company date back to 2010, when he appeared in the documents of a sports and leisure company registered in Beijing. In the years that followed, he invested in a Chinese medical equipment manufacturer, which was subsequently listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

In 2020, the network of companies established with Kang secured a major contract: to help build and manage an artificial intelligence data centre in Shanghai for Tencent. This was the step that paved the way for subsequent international expansion.

The company in Singapore and Nvidia’s billions of chips

The turning point came in 2023. After Washington introduced increasingly stringent restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductors to China, Huang identified South-East Asia as the route to entering the market for artificial intelligence chips.

Through a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, he acquires a Singapore-based subsidiary belonging to 7Road, a group active in online video games and linked to his Shanghai network. The company was renamed Megaspeed and subsequently transferred to a Singaporean shell company. Huang, however, continued to manage its day-to-day operations.

The corporate structure is particularly significant at a time when US regulations prevent Chinese companies from purchasing some of the most advanced processors directly. Setting up a company formally based outside China enables Megaspeed to access the market for Nvidia technologies.

In December 2023, Huang met Jensen Huang at an Italian restaurant in Singapore, along with a small group of colleagues. The relationship between the two is said to have grown stronger in the years that followed. In June 2024, during a technology event in Taipei, Alice Huang is said to have even made a bet with some of the executives present that she could get Nvidia’s CEO to attend a party. Jensen Huang did indeed turn up shortly afterwards.

Photographs featuring Nvidia’s founder have become part of his public image in technology circles. An industry executive who knew her said that Huang proudly showed off the photos with the American manager, regarding them as an important part of his professional reputation.

Meanwhile, the business is growing rapidly. Megaspeed has begun receiving large shipments of Nvidia processors, securing over $4 billion’s worth of advanced hardware. Among its key clients is Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, via a company linked to the group’s operations in Malaysia.

Megaspeed’s expansion soon attracted the attention of the US authorities. At the end of 2024, an official from the US Department of Commerce visited one of the company’s data centres to check for the presence of the Nvidia processors that had been purchased. Some of the equipment was still in its packaging, a circumstance which raised questions about whether it had actually been installed and whether it might have been moved elsewhere.

Taiwan, too, began monitoring Huang’s travels on the island, following US advice. In March 2025, the woman visited Nvidia’s headquarters in California alongside other executives. Two months later, she was photographed again having dinner with Jensen Huang in Taipei.

At the same time, an investigation was launched in Singapore. In 2025, the authorities prevented her from leaving the country for a period and questioned her as part of an investigation into alleged false declarations relating to the import of goods. According to reports, insufficient evidence was found to prove her involvement in the irregularities, and the investigations into her have been closed. The investigations into Megaspeed, however, remain open.

Huang’s departure from day-to-day management has not brought the company’s activities to a halt. Megaspeed is pressing ahead with the construction of a data centre in Malaysia, where the processors required for the first phase of the project have already been secured. Other managers linked to her network are responsible for obtaining the necessary authorisations and ensuring that work continues.

Support is also coming from China. Shanghai Shuoyao, another company linked to Huang’s network, has sent teams of engineers to work on the Malaysian project. The company has been hailed by the local authorities in Shanghai as an industrial model: its new artificial intelligence server factory is said to be capable of repairing and reconfiguring equipment right down to the level of individual chips, thanks to over a hundred specialist technicians.

The case of Alice Huang highlights one of the most vulnerable aspects of the US strategy to contain China’s technological advancement: the difficulty of controlling a supply chain that spans several countries, relies on complex corporate structures, and has developed through personal and commercial relationships that predate the current geopolitical tensions. It is a game in which the line between technology and intelligence appears increasingly difficult to draw.