# NYT: US officials saw Jensen Huang as the target of a Chinese intelligence operation

> According to the NYT, US intelligence assessed that former Megaspeed executive Alice Huang passed information to Beijing. Nvidia and China deny it; no charges.

- Publisher: JARRUS (@jarrus.tech), thejarrus.com
- Story date: Oct. 29, 2026 (2026-10-29)
- Published: 2026-10-30
- Tags: Nvidia, China, Regulation and law
- URL: https://thejarrus.com/en/news/jensen-huang-megaspeed/

### The NYT report

On October 29, 2026, The New York Times reported, under a six-reporter byline, that US officials saw Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as the target of a Chinese intelligence operation. According to the report, US intelligence assessed that Alice Huang (Huang Le), a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, was an asset passing information to Beijing. Electronic surveillance showed her in contact with a US citizen, who was identified through the unmasking process as Jensen Huang. What she passed on has not been disclosed. The assessment rests on the NYT's anonymous sources; other outlets are relaying the NYT.

Alice Huang is not related to Jensen Huang. The NYT reported in October 2025 that she had left Megaspeed in recent months, and Jensen Huang said on October 29 that she is no longer at the company. According to the NYT, the extent of her remaining ties to the firm is unclear. Alice Huang did not respond, and she has not been charged.

![Photo NetThunder shared in Taipei in June 2024; Jensen Huang is seated, the face of the person beside him is obscured](https://thejarrus.com/gorsel/c68-netthunder.webp)
*Image: [NetThunder on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/netthunder_computex-ai-activity-7204717554206924800-rR8T) (June 7, 2024). One face obscured.*

In this photo, posted by NetThunder on LinkedIn during Computex in June 2024, Jensen Huang appears with Gigabyte and NetThunder executives. The post introduces the person beside him as "Megaspeed Chairwoman Alice Wong"; the NYT used the same photo in 2025 and identified her as Alice Huang (Huang and Wong are different romanizations of the same surname).

### Megaspeed

Megaspeed was spun out of the overseas business of Chinese gaming and cloud company 7Road in 2023; 7Road's shareholders include Chinese state investors. According to the NYT in 2025, it has an affiliate in Malaysia called Speedmatrix. By the NYT's count, based on ImportGenius trade records, Megaspeed's sister company in Malaysia bought at least $4.8 billion of equipment containing Nvidia chips between June 2024 and February 2026. The purchases alone don't establish that anything was illegally diverted.

The US Commerce Department began investigating the company in 2024 after unopened boxes of equipment were found at a data center in Malaysia; the probe was handed to the Justice Department in 2026. Singapore police confirmed in October 2025 that they had opened an investigation. In a December 2025 statement, Megaspeed said audits by the US Commerce Department's BIS, Malaysia's Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) and Nvidia found no violations.

### Trump and the surveillance

According to the NYT, President Trump was briefed about a year ago and took no action. Jensen Huang was not given a defensive briefing; officials believed at the time that he was unaware, though some senior officials later questioned that. According to the NYT, the surveillance continued after Trump's briefing. The White House, CIA and NSA declined to comment.

### What the parties say

Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo told the NYT that Jensen's interactions with Alice Huang were not unusual or unexpected, that meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job, and that Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year. According to Rizzo, regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information, not sensitive Nvidia trade secrets, and no information relevant to national security. An unnamed Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC that the diversion allegations against this regional cloud were thoroughly investigated and debunked last year, and that the company is confident the US government would let it know if it believed any person was a threat to American industry.

Jensen Huang told Bloomberg the relationship was normal, that Nvidia had studied Megaspeed's GPU deployments and counted every one, that Alice Huang is no longer at the company and that the government had not flagged any concern to him. Megaspeed said it hired outside lawyers for an internal inquiry and will cooperate with the US government. China's embassy in Washington called the allegations groundless smears. No one has been charged in connection with the report.

## Sources

1. [The New York Times: Nvidia Chief Seen as Target of Chinese Spy Plot, Oct. 29, 2026](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/us/politics/nvidia-china-jensen-huang-trump.html)
2. [CNBC: Nvidia pushes back on report about Jensen Huang and alleged Chinese intelligence asset, Oct. 29, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/29/nvidia-jensen-huang-chinese-intelligence-asset.html)
3. [Quartz: Jensen Huang says Nvidia’s ties to suspected Chinese spy’s firm were normal, Oct. 29, 2026](https://qz.com/jensen-huang-nvidia-megaspeed-china-spy-report-102926)
4. [IBTimes UK: Trump Was Briefed on Alleged Chinese Intelligence Operation Involving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Report Says, Oct. 30, 2026](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-intelligence-jensen-huang-alleged-chinese-asset-1828917)
5. [SiliconANGLE: Report: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was targeted by a Chinese spy, Oct. 29, 2026](https://siliconangle.com/2026/10/29/report-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-was-targeted-by-a-chinese-spy/)
6. [The New York Times: A Mystery C.E.O. and Billions in Sales: Is China Buying Banned Nvidia Chips?, Oct. 9, 2025](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/technology/nvidia-chips-china-megaspeed.html)
7. [NetThunder (LinkedIn): #computex #ai | NetThunder, June 7, 2024](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/netthunder_computex-ai-activity-7204717554206924800-rR8T)

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