Megaspeed, a Singapore data center company run by Chinese national Alice Huang (Chinese name Huang Le), who has been named as the affair partner of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, is known to be a firm of unclear substance.
According to Singapore outlet the Straits Times on the 10th (local time), Megaspeed closed the door of its office on the seventh floor of a high-end office building in Singapore's central business district last October and did not answer phone calls. The office saw no foot traffic, effectively disappearing from view.
Last October was when allegations first surfaced that Megaspeed helped smuggle Nvidia's cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chips into China. At the time, a tenant in the same building said, "Since (Megaspeed) moved in here, the lights have always been off," adding, "I've rarely seen people coming and going or anyone inside the office."
Another tenant said it was strange to leave an office empty in such a prime location in Singapore, where rent is extremely expensive.
A day earlier, a reporter from the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in Hong Kong tried to visit the office but was denied entry. Agence France-Presse also reported that when a reporter called the phone number listed on Megaspeed's website, the person who answered said it was a private residence and that they did not know much about Megaspeed.
Megaspeed is believed to have imported at least $4.6 billion (about 6.2 trillion won) worth of Nvidia AI equipment through its Malaysian subsidiary SpeedMatrix. U.S. authorities have suspected since 2024 that Megaspeed may be smuggling to China some Nvidia chips banned for export to China and have been investigating.
Megaspeed's website describes the company as a "key business partner" of Nvidia's computing power cloud operations in the Asia-Pacific region and says it runs multiple data centers in Southeast Asia. Its LinkedIn page says the company has 2–10 employees and maintains offices in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Johor, Malaysia.
Singapore corporate registration records show Megaspeed opened in 2015 as SevenRoad International, the Singapore subsidiary of SevenRoad (第七大道), a mid-sized gaming company based in Shenzhen, China. In March 2023 it changed its name to Megaspeed, with Alice Huang acquiring ownership and becoming an executive director. That November, Huang transferred the company to Singaporean Tan Yong Pong and stepped down.
Tan owns SwiftData, the company that is now the sole registered shareholder of Megaspeed. He is known to have been active in China since 2005. In 2022 he set up two companies in Singapore, but those firms have since disappeared. After creating SwiftData in 2023, he took over Megaspeed from Alice Huang.
However, according to the Straits Times, as of last October the Singapore office building listed as SwiftData's address was being used by a professional services firm whose director had previously served as secretary for SwiftData and Megaspeed. The director said it is common for clients to use the firm's address to register their company address. The director's family also said the director was in China at the time, not in Singapore at the listed address.
In particular, when questions about Megaspeed intensified last year, Singapore authorities investigated the company with the possibility that it may have violated domestic law, but did not disclose specifics. Singapore police said the probe is still underway, but they are not examining any links between Alice Huang and China even after rumors surfaced that Huang was a Chinese spy.
U.S. intelligence is reported to view Alice Huang as a spy for China's Ministry of State Security (MSS).
Huang, who ran Megaspeed, is known to have used her fluent English to build extensive ties with senior figures in the semiconductor industry. She first met CEO Huang in early 2024 and, along with other companions on several occasions, had meals and drinks with him and became close. In May last year, she was spotted kissing CEO Huang on the cheek at a Chinese restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, before leaving in the same car.
