Who is Alice Huang? The woman at the center of Nvidia’s scandal remains elusive
Her sleeveless pink dress, her sparkly heels, her belted white coat. The wine glass she held, the resort she visited, the bench she sat on.
As Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s scandal makes headlines, a breathless
public has scrutinized apparent images of the woman at the center of it all for clues to who she is.
The photographs have spread widely. Much of her story has not.
The explosive tale of Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang — full of sex, international intrigue and accusations of espionage — has rocked the tech and political worlds. Yet basic questions about her life — and how she grew close to one of the world’s most powerful technology executives — remain unanswered.
Here's a look at what’s known about Alice Huang:
A relationship with an AI poster boy under scrutiny
Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, drew wide attention last month, when The New York Times reported she had formed a close relationship with Nvidia’s chief and passed information to Beijing. U.S. officials, the Times reported, had concluded Alice Huang was a Chinese spy who had been recruited to influence California-based Nvidia to make its most advanced chips more available in China, a discovery the paper said set off alarms as high as the White House.
Jensen Huang is a poster boy for the AI revolution and one of the world’s wealthiest people, with a personal fortune that Forbes estimates at more than $150 billion. The scandal has cast new light on the Taiwan-born executive, who just months ago insisted in an interview with The Associated Press that he is “deeply boring.” By Sunday, that assertion was upended by his letter to Nvidia's board of directors admitting to being unfaithful to his wife without identifying the woman with whom he’d had an affair.
It remains unclear when the apparent affair started and when it might have ended. The Associated Press was unable to reach Alice Huang for comment.
A career traced through corporate records and digital breadcrumbs
Alice Huang, once a television reporter in China, became a director at Singapore-based Megaspeed in 2023. The company, which describes itself as a “Nvidia cloud partner,” has faced scrutiny from the U.S. over its alleged skirting of U.S. export restrictions and routing a large amount of advanced chips to China.
Megaspeed, spun off as the overseas arm of a Chinese video game developer, was originally incorporated in Singapore in 2015 as 7Road International, according to corporate registration records. It was renamed Megaspeed International in March 2023, with all of its shares transferred to a British Virgin Islands company.
That island company is known by a name shared with Alice Huang: Huang Le Limited.
After the renaming, Alice Huang became Megaspeed’s controlling shareholder, according to research by the C4ADS, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on global security. Eight months later, she was no longer listed as a director at Megaspeed, and her shares were transferred to a Singaporean businessman, Tan Yong Pong, who also is known as James Tan. While public records show Alice Huang leaving Megaspeed, short seller Culper Research issued a report suggesting otherwise.
Huang was “actually still our boss,” a Megaspeed employee claimed in the May report, and was still involved in the company’s daily operations.
Before Megaspeed, Alice Huang held senior positions at the Chinese firm Shanghai Hexi Investment Co. from around 2015 to 2017, according to social media posts and records from Simuwang, a Chinese private equity database. Hexi founder Kang Wei, who appeared on some records alongside Alice Huang, was fined in 2018 by China’s securities regulator 400,000 yuan (about $60,000) over financial misconduct behavior, while the company was fined 17.7 million yuan (about $2.7 million).
Before that, Alice Huang worked at HSBC’s Hong Kong private banking arm and at CITIC Securities, a Chinese investment bank.
HSBC and CITIC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on her employment history.
Denials from Beijing and scrutiny from Singapore
Beijing has rebutted claims that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy, calling the allegation “unsubstantiated."
“It is nothing but smears against China,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Megaspeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It boasts on its website of being “a core business partner” for Nvidia in Asia.
Nvidia likewise lists Megaspeed as a partner on its own site.
Late last year, Megaspeed denied accusations following reports that it was routing Nvidia chips to China, saying in a statement on its website that “there has been no evidence of any violations concerning the illicit transfer of chips or any illegal activities.” After the accusations of Alice Huang being a Chinese intelligence source emerged, Singapore’s government said it was investigating Megaspeed and that it “does not condone businesses” circumventing or violating other countries’ export controls.
However, it said, there were no investigations conducted with respect to Alice Huang.
That won’t stop the wider public from continuing to seek answers about her. But for nearly every morsel of information that surfaces, a multitude of other questions remain.