US officials believe Megaspeed executive Alice Huang is a Chinese asset who maintained a close relationship with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang to pass intelligence to Beijing, The New York Times reported on 29 October 2026, as summarised by Techmeme. The Times reported that President Trump was briefed and took no action.
By our arithmetic, the report comes 28 months after the June 2024 night in Taipei where the Times placed the two together, and about a year after it reported that the Commerce Department was investigating Megaspeed.
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The key insight: The New York Times reported on 29 October 2026 that US officials believe Megaspeed executive Alice Huang is a Chinese intelligence asset who stayed close to Nvidia chief Jensen Huang; by our arithmetic, that is 28 months after the Times placed the two together at a Taipei bar.
The article ran under the headline “Nvidia Chief, Jensen Huang, Is Seen as Target of Chinese Spy Plot”. Its summary says that “A Chinese businesswoman who had a close relationship with Jensen Huang was found to be passing intelligence to Beijing. President Trump was briefed and took no action.” The byline lists Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Ana Swanson, Paul Mozur, Tripp Mickle and Julian E. Barnes.
Mozur, one of the reporters, wrote on X that it was a “New big turn in our Singapore chip-smuggling investigations” and that “U.S. officials believe the mysterious business woman seen with Jensen Huang in Taiwan in recent years is a Chinese intelligence asset”.
The article opens, as shown on Techmeme, by noting that Jensen Huang “is influential at the White House on technology policy”. We could not read the full article, so details beyond its headline, summary and opening are not included here.
What The New York Times has reported about Megaspeed executive Alice Huang and Nvidia: a Taipei bar in June 2024, a Commerce Department probe and $2 billion of planned Nvidia purchases (reported October 2025), and on 29 October 2026 US officials’ belief that she is a Chinese intelligence asset. The 28 months is our arithmetic. Allegations are as reported, not established. Sources: The New York Times, 9 Oct 2025 and 29 Oct 2026.
Paul Mozur, one of the New York Times reporters on the article, posted the headline finding: US officials believe the businesswoman seen with Jensen Huang in Taiwan is a Chinese intelligence asset, and President Trump was briefed but took no action. The piece quotes this post.
For background, last year we wrote about a little known company, Megaspeed, which bought billions in Nvidia chips. When some of the chips were still in boxes at a data center, Commerce began to investigate it for potentially smuggling AI chips to China. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/technology/nvidia-chips-china-megaspeed.html
In a follow-up post, Mozur pointed back to the Times’ 2025 reporting on Megaspeed, which he says bought billions in Nvidia chips and drew a Commerce Department investigation into potential smuggling to China. The piece uses it for background.
Who Is Megaspeed
The Times reported on Megaspeed in October 2025. That article described Alice Huang as “an executive of a Singapore-based data center company called Megaspeed, which was poised to buy $2 billion of Nvidia A.I. technology over the next year”, according to passages quoted on X. It placed her next to Jensen Huang at a Taipei bar in early June 2024 and said the two are not related.
The same article reported that “Commerce Department officials have been investigating whether Megaspeed, which has close ties to Chinese tech firms, is helping companies in China sidestep American export restrictions”, citing current and former officials. It added that Singaporean police said they were investigating the company for breaching local laws.
Mozur wrote on 29 October that Megaspeed “bought billions in Nvidia chips” and that Commerce began to investigate it “for potentially smuggling AI chips to China”.
What Nvidia Has Said
Nvidia previously told the Times that Megaspeed is “wholly owned and operated by a company based and headquartered outside China, with no China shareholders”, Benzinga reported in May 2026.
We searched Google News, the web and the Techmeme discussion on 29 October and had not found a statement from Nvidia, Megaspeed, Alice Huang or the White House on the new report at the time of writing. The Times summary we read does not include responses.
By our arithmetic, the $2 billion the Times said Megaspeed was poised to buy equals about 6% of that $35 billion order book. The two figures cover different things: one company’s planned purchases over a year, and three Chinese buyers’ reported orders for a different, export-compliant product.
As we read it, the Times placed the report next to Huang’s influence on technology policy at the White House.
As we read it, the report moves the Megaspeed story from export compliance to intelligence: the Times’ October 2025 article was about a Commerce Department probe into whether Megaspeed helped Chinese companies sidestep export restrictions.
Times reporter Paul Mozur called it a “New big turn in our Singapore chip-smuggling investigations”, and wrote that Megaspeed “bought billions in Nvidia chips”.
As we read it, the report bears on Nvidia’s commercial position: the Times article opens on Huang’s influence at the White House on technology policy, while Reuters reported more than $35 billion of Chinese orders for an export-compliant Nvidia card on 20 October.
Paul Mozur, The New York Times, on X, 29 October 2026
“U.S. officials believe the mysterious business woman seen with Jensen Huang in Taiwan in recent years is a Chinese intelligence asset. Pres. Trump was briefed but took no action.”
Three Implications
FOR NVIDIA Nvidia previously told the Times that Megaspeed has no China shareholders; we had not found a response to the 29 October report at the time of writing.
FOR EXPORT POLICY The Times reported in 2025 that Commerce officials were investigating whether Megaspeed helped companies in China sidestep American export restrictions.
FOR INVESTORS By our arithmetic, the $2 billion Megaspeed was reported to be poised to buy equals about 6% of the more than $35 billion in Chinese orders Reuters reported on 20 October, on different scopes.
The framework argues that AI’s physical constraints are creating “geopolitical leverage that operates independently of who has the best models.”
As we read it, chips are that kind of leverage, and the Megaspeed reports concern who gets them and who is watching. The framework was published in December 2025, is about minerals and physical supply chains, and does not discuss Nvidia or Megaspeed.
What Is Not Established
The allegation that Alice Huang is a Chinese intelligence asset is a belief of US officials as reported by the Times; no charge against her was reported in the material we read. The Times summary says she “was found to be passing intelligence to Beijing”; we did not see the evidence.
Nothing in the material we read accuses Jensen Huang of wrongdoing; the Times headline describes him as a target. We did not read the full article or watch the companion video, and no response from the people or companies named was available to us at the time of writing.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Execution Fault Lines, Concentrated Demand, and Geopolitical Firewalls
This week’s issue: the AI build is not short of demand for its parts. It is short of cheap money, and its end revenue rests on a narrow base of large, often venture-funded buyers.
The New York Times reported that US officials believe Megaspeed executive Alice Huang is a Chinese intelligence asset who stayed close to Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, and that President Trump was briefed and took no action. Nvidia has previously said Megaspeed has no China shareholders.
What happened next (29 Oct):Nvidia’s own filings show how its China revenue is counted. Since late 2025 it has counted customers by headquarters rather than billing location; on that count China was 19.2% of fiscal 2025 revenue, against 13.1% under the old method, and 8.2%, or $7,880 million, in the quarter to July 2026, by our arithmetic. The filings do not mention Megaspeed.
A note on sourcing. This piece reports allegations made by US officials as described by The New York Times; they are not established. We read the Times headline, summary and byline, the opening shown on Techmeme and posts by Times reporter Paul Mozur, not the full article. Passages from the Times’ October 2025 article are as quoted on X. The 28-month span and the 6% comparison are our arithmetic; linked earlier pieces carry their own sources.
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.
