Nvidia chips, Alibaba ties and Jensen Huang scandal: Inside Alice Huang's $100 million-plus pitch
Alice Huang, the Chinese businesswoman at the centre of allegations involving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, pitched investors on a South-east Asian data centre project worth several hundred million dollars, promising access to Nvidia's coveted AI chips and highlighting business ties with Chinese technology giant Alibaba, according to an exclusive report by the Financial Times.
The investment pitch, made in early 2025 alongside business partner Kang Wei, is now drawing fresh attention as US intelligence agencies investigate allegations that Alice Huang had links to China's espionage network and was romantically involved with the Nvidia chief.
According to two investors cited by the Financial Times, the pair presented access to advanced Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) as a major selling point. They also identified Alibaba as a customer for the proposed project.
Quick answers to key questions
•5 QUESTIONS
1
Who is Alice Huang in the Megaspeed and Nvidia controversy?⌵Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, is a Chinese businesswoman and former Megaspeed executive. She and business partner Kang Wei pitched investors on a proposed Southeast Asian data centre project.
2
What did Alice Huang promise investors in her data centre pitch?⌵The pitch highlighted access to advanced Nvidia GPUs and identified Alibaba as a customer for the proposed Southeast Asian project. The investment requirement was described as several hundred million dollars.
3
How was Alibaba connected to Megaspeed?⌵The Financial Times reported that Alibaba was Megaspeed’s anchor customer for its Southeast Asian cloud services and remained its largest client. It also reported that an Alibaba subsidiary extended a loan to Megaspeed through its Malaysian subsidiary.
4
Why are Alice Huang’s Nvidia chip connections under scrutiny?⌵The reported pitch promoted access to Nvidia chips, while US officials have raised concerns about possible links between Alice Huang, Jensen Huang and an alleged Chinese intelligence operation. The reports also prompted questions about access to advanced chips amid US export restrictions on China.
5
Did Megaspeed illegally transfer Nvidia chips to China?⌵The articles describe allegations and investigations, not an established finding of illegal transfers. Megaspeed denies wrongdoing and says inspections by US and Malaysian authorities and Nvidia found no evidence of violations.
One investor told the Financial Times that the duo had assured potential backers they had "no problem securing GPUs".
The proposed project was aimed at building data centre capacity across South-east Asia, with an investment requirement running into several hundred million dollars.
The Nvidia chips were central to the business proposition. These powerful processors are used to develop and run artificial intelligence models, making access to them particularly valuable for companies looking to expand their AI operations.
Alibaba's involvement also appears to have strengthened the pitch. According to the Financial Times, the Chinese technology group had been Megaspeed's anchor customer for its South-east Asian cloud services from the beginning and remained its largest client.
Company documents cited by the newspaper show that Alibaba, through its Singapore subsidiary Apex Enterprise Solutions, extended a loan to Megaspeed through its Malaysian subsidiary Speedmatrix in June 2024. Speedmatrix pledged its entire business as collateral.
Megaspeed's balance sheet subsequently expanded from $33 million to $3 billion during 2024, largely reflecting transactions involving its subsidiaries, the report said.
Alice Huang's business dealings have attracted attention following reports of her alleged romantic relationship with Nvidia chief Jensen Huang.
According to people familiar with a classified US intelligence assessment cited by the Financial Times, American officials believed the Nvidia CEO had been involved with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed.
The allegations have raised concerns about whether the relationship could have been part of an alleged Chinese intelligence operation aimed at accessing sensitive information or influencing decisions involving the global AI industry.
The Financial Times reported that Alice Huang did not disclose any close relationship with the Nvidia chief during her investment pitch or routine business dealings.
The newspaper also reported that Jensen Huang and Alice Huang had been photographed together at dinners in Shanghai, as well as in Hong Kong and California. However, the photographs did not establish an inappropriate relationship, and several were taken in group settings.
Alice Huang, whose Chinese name is Huang Le, is also a partner at Hexi Private Equity Partners, an investment fund established in 2010. Chinese corporate filings show that the fund stopped updating its annual results in 2022, with several of its investment products subsequently wound up.
She was briefly registered as a Megaspeed executive in 2023. The Singapore-based company has faced investigations in multiple jurisdictions over allegations of Nvidia chip smuggling, which it has strongly denied.
Her business partner Kang Wei is also a board member of Guilin Bank, a state-controlled Chinese lender, according to corporate records.
Meanwhile, China's Foreign Ministry rejected the espionage allegations on Monday, calling them groundless and describing them as an attempt at smear and defamation.
Nvidia's board has launched an investigation into the national security concerns raised in reports involving its CEO Jensen Huang.
Sayantani Biswas is an assistant editor at Livemint with seven years of experience covering geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations and global power dynamics. She reports on Indian and international politics, including elections worldwide, and specialises in historically grounded analysis of contemporary conflicts and state decisions. She joined Mint in 2021, after covering politics at publications including The Telegraph. <br> She holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (2019), with a specialisation in postcolonial Latin American literature. Her research examined economic nationalism through Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. She also writes on political language, cultural memory and the long shadows of conflict. <br> Biswas grew up in Durgapur, an industrial town in West Bengal shaped by migration, which drew families from across India to the Durgapur Steel Plant. As the only child in a joint family, she spent years listening—almost obsessively—to her grandparents’ testimonies of struggle, fear and loss as they fled Bangladesh during the Partition of 1947. This formative exposure to lived historical memory later converged with her training in Comparative Literature, equipping her to analyse socio-economic structures and their reverberations. <br> Outside the newsroom, she gravitates towards cultural history and critical theory, returning often to texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour and fairness, and believes political reporting demands not only clarity and speed, but historical depth, contextual precision, and a disciplined resistance to spectacle.
Catch all the Business News , Corporate news , Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
More
✕
Wait for it…
Oops! Looks like you have exceeded the limit to bookmark the image. Remove some to bookmark this image.