Records seen by The Wall Street Journal show that Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company, arranged to send nearly $12 billion worth of top-of-the-line Nvidia chips to companies in China between March 2024 and June 2025, the WSJ reported on 14 November. The records show orders for several hundred thousand chips, though they “don’t show how much of the hardware was actually delivered or where it originated”, the WSJ wrote.
Spread over those 16 months, the figure is $0.75 billion a month, about 36% of the monthly pace of the $25,048 million Nvidia booked from China-headquartered customers in fiscal 2025, by our arithmetic. Megaspeed said on 15 November that recent media reports about its business are “not supported by verifiable evidence” and that it has hired outside counsel.
Business Pill · GPUs Explained
A one-minute explainer of what GPUs are and why AI training depends on them. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Megaspeed, Nvidia’s China sales or this report.
The key insight: As we read the figures, the records point to a demand channel that a headquarters-based revenue table can miss: $0.75 billion a month of orders arranged by a Singapore-based company, against about $2.09 billion a month of Nvidia revenue from China-headquartered customers in fiscal 2025, by our arithmetic.
The orders were for “the very ones that the U.S. wanted most to keep out of Chinese hands through export controls”, the WSJ wrote. The WSJ’s account of the records does not name the companies in China behind the orders or the chip models involved.
In the same passage the WSJ wrote that “Nvidia says it works to prevent smuggling” and that “Megaspeed says it takes compliance seriously and is committed to following U.S. law”. Megaspeed also said in the past week that it had retained a US law firm to lead a census of its graphics processing units, the WSJ reported.
Megaspeed describes itself as a “core business partner” of Nvidia’s computing power cloudbusiness in the region, CNBC reported. People in the industry told the WSJ that the big customer Megaspeed pointed to in Nvidia’s cloud partner program was Alibaba. Singapore police are still investigating Megaspeed, as our piece on the Singapore probe sets out.
Megaspeed’s reported orders per month (records seen by the WSJ, March 2024 to June 2025) against Nvidia’s monthly revenue from customers headquartered in China, including Hong Kong, by fiscal year (Nvidia 10-K). The monthly figures and the 36% comparison are our arithmetic; orders and revenue are different measures.
What Megaspeed Said on 15 November
In a statement reported by Reuters, Megaspeed said: “Megaspeed is aware of recent media reports containing assertions about our business, supply chain and global operations that are not supported by verifiable evidence.” The company said it conducted “legitimate and lawful business” and had retained external legal counsel to conduct a “thorough internal investigation”, Reuters reported.
In the statement shared with CNBC, Megaspeed said it “designs and maintains its global operational and supply-chain control frameworks to comply with all applicable laws and regulatory regimes, including United States export control requirements”. The company added that it will review the reporting and communicate further with stakeholders, CNBC reported.
Megaspeed also said a former executive left the company effective 30 August 2025 and has no current role. Neither the Reuters nor the CNBC account of the statements mentions the WSJ or the $12 billion figure.
How $12 Billion Compares With Nvidia’s China Revenue
Nvidia’s 10-K for the year to 25 January 2026 reports revenue by customer headquarters. China, including Hong Kong, was $12,330 million in fiscal 2024, $25,048 million in fiscal 2025 and $19,677 million in fiscal 2026, or 9.1% of $215,938 million of revenue in fiscal 2026, by our arithmetic.
By month, $0.75 billion of orders compares with about $2.09 billion of China-headquartered revenue in fiscal 2025 and $1.64 billion in fiscal 2026. The $12 billion equals 48% of the full fiscal 2025 figure; that fiscal year, which ran from 29 January 2024 to 26 January 2025, overlaps 11 of the 16 months, by our arithmetic.
The two figures measure different things: the WSJ describes orders arranged, while the 10-K reports revenue billed. The 10-K also says “The end customer and shipping location may be different from our customers’ headquarters location”, and it does not name Megaspeed. The WSJ noted that Nvidia reported $12.4 billion in China revenue in the six months to 26 July 2026, 7% of its global revenue. Our Nvidia hub tracks the filings.
What Washington and Malaysia Are Doing
The Commerce Department is working on rules that would add Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore to a group of countries subject to export restrictions, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ. Exporters of chips such as Nvidia’s Blackwell series to those countries would need a licence that bars Chinese customers from remotely accessing the computing power, the WSJ reported.
Malaysia said on Friday 13 November that it “will not allow itself to be used to get around export controls” and was investigating Megaspeed and its Malaysian affiliate over any possible re-export of AI chips, the WSJ reported. Axios reported on 11 November that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had pressed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on why Megaspeed was not on the Entity List, an account the Commerce Department denied, as our piece on Bessent and Lutnick sets out.
The Structural Read
As we read the 10-K, Nvidia counts revenue by where a customer is headquartered, and it says the end customer and shipping location may differ, so the filing alone cannot show how much of its sales reached China through partners elsewhere.
As we read the WSJ report, the open question for regulators is the rule set, not only one company: the rules Commerce is drafting would require licences for Blackwell-class exports to Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore that bar remote access by Chinese customers.
Megaspeed, statement reported by Reuters, 15 November 2026
“Megaspeed is aware of recent media reports containing assertions about our business, supply chain and global operations that are not supported by verifiable evidence.”
Three Implications
FOR NVIDIA SHAREHOLDERS Nvidia’s 10-K puts revenue from China-headquartered customers at $19,677 million in fiscal 2026, 9.1% of the total by our arithmetic, and the WSJ’s $12 billion is a figure for orders, not revenue.
FOR DATA-CENTRE OPERATORS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA People familiar told the WSJ that Commerce is drafting licence rules for Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, and Malaysia says it is investigating Megaspeed and its Malaysian affiliate.
FOR EXPORT-CONTROL WATCHERS The records do not show how much hardware was delivered or where it originated, the WSJ wrote, so the figure measures orders arranged, not chips shipped.
The framework says: “Layer 9 answers to geopolitics, not to engineering.”
As we read it, the WSJ report is a case of that layer at work: where chip orders flow is being set by export rules, licences and investigations, and the framework does not discuss Megaspeed or this report.
What Is Not Established
Legality and licences: the WSJ’s account of the records does not say that any order broke US export law. Whether one did would turn on the chip model, the destination, any licence held and the end user, and the article gives none of these for the orders.
Delivery and end users: the records do not show how much hardware was delivered or where it originated, the WSJ wrote, and the buyers in China are not named. FourWeekMBA has not seen the records and did not contact the companies for this piece; the responses quoted were given to the WSJ, CNBC and Reuters.
Nvidia, Commerce and the Justice Department: the article quotes no Nvidia comment on the $12 billion figure beyond its statement on smuggling, and cites no Commerce Department or Justice Department statement on Megaspeed’s orders. Megaspeed’s 15 November statements, as reported, did not address the figure.
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Records seen by the WSJ show Megaspeed arranged nearly $12 billion of top-of-the-line Nvidia chip orders for companies in China between March 2024 and June 2025, $0.75 billion a month, or about 36% of the monthly pace of Nvidia’s fiscal 2025 China-headquartered revenue, by our arithmetic. The records do not show deliveries, and Megaspeed says reports about its business are “not supported by verifiable evidence”.
A note on sourcing. The $12 billion figure, the order records and the responses in them come from the Wall Street Journal’s report of 14 November 2026, which we read in full; we have not seen the records. Megaspeed’s 15 November statements are as reported by Reuters and CNBC. Nvidia’s revenue by customer headquarters comes from its fiscal 2026 Form 10-K on SEC EDGAR. The monthly figures and the 36% and 48% comparisons are our arithmetic. FourWeekMBA did not contact Megaspeed, Nvidia, the Commerce Department or the Justice Department for this piece.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
