Suspected Chinese spy at center of Nvidia CEO scandal surfaces in Beijing

Alice Huang, the Megaspeed executive whose alleged affair with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sits at the center of a chip-smuggling investigation, has surfaced in Beijing — her first reported sighting since the scandal broke. Bloomberg says it's unclear when she arrived in the Chinese capital or why she's there.

Huang, suspected by U.S. authorities of helping sanctioned Chinese firms obtain hundreds of thousands of banned H100 and H200 chips, was last seen leaving Singapore for Shanghai in 2025. Singapore authorities had detained and questioned her during their investigation into the $2-billion smuggling case involving Megaspeed.

What does this change for Jensen Huang?

Plenty. Congress is threatening a subpoena if the Nvidia CEO doesn't accept an invitation to what lawmakers call "a joint, closed-door briefing" with the heads of the House committees on China, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence. The FBI is also examining his relationship with a person suspected of facilitating chip smuggling into China.

The pressure compounds. A second overnight report claims Jensen Huang also had an extramarital affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's VP of health care.

Who is Alice Huang?

A deeper investigation, reported by the Wall Street Journal, fills in her background. Known in China as Huang Le, she reportedly worked in media before moving into banking and finance. She and her husband, Kang Wei, ran a private equity and investment management firm called Shanghai Hexi, founded in 2016. The firm invested across industries — gaming, pharmaceuticals, and eventually data centers and cloud computing.

The couple has a record of riding trends. Shanghai Hexi backed gaming companies during the 2010s mobile gaming boom. In 2018, Chinese regulators fined Kang and the company for disclosure failures and other violations during a takeover battle for a corporation.

Kang's gaming-industry moves are what brought him into contact with Jensen Huang. That connection grew into a close relationship between the couple and the Nvidia chief. Sources told the WSJ that Kang apparently accepted his wife's extramarital relationship with Jensen Huang, at times jokingly telling people she was his "personal assistant."

Was it espionage or business?

The Chinese embassy in Washington denies any connection to Alice Huang, dismissing the allegations as "groundless smears and slanders" against Beijing. Speculation persists, however, that she operates under the control of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China's primary foreign intelligence and counterintelligence agency.

U.S. intelligence suggests she may have passed information to the MSS. What remains unclear is whether Chinese intelligence specifically tasked her to target Jensen Huang, or whether they merely leveraged her relationship to gain insight into the U.S. AI industry.

The business case was substantial either way. Global investment in AI data centers is expected to hit $32 trillion by 2050, and the couple's access to the head of the world's largest AI hardware company positioned Shanghai Hexi — through Megaspeed — to profit handsomely. U.S. sanctions made Nvidia chips harder for competitors to acquire; that scarcity turned Megaspeed's access into a gold mine.

The bottom line

Whether Alice Huang acted purely from business interest in procuring Nvidia chips, or was leveraged by Chinese authorities to import them, the outcome stands: roughly $7.5 billion worth of banned chips reportedly reached China despite Washington's export controls. Her appearance in Beijing does little to quiet the questions now facing both Nvidia's CEO and the agencies investigating him.