A short seller flagged Nvidia CEO's ties to a suspected Chinese spy six months before the scandal

Six months before the Nvidia spy scandal emerged, the New York-based short seller firm Culper Research had already raised questions about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s unusually close relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company that buys Nvidia chips. She is now suspected to be a Chinese spy.

The Nvidia CEO admitted to an extramarital affair over the weekend, and the company has now opened a formal investigation into his relationship with Alice Huang (who shares his last name but is not related). U.S. intelligence officials believe she was recruited by the Chinese government to collect intelligence on Jensen Huang and influence his position regarding U.S. export controls on advanced AI chips.

Culper’s May 13 report is resurfacing because it picked up on the connection between Jensen Huang and Alice Huang while investigating Megaspeed’s ties to Nvidia.

In particular, the report called the relationship between the two executives “uncomfortably close,” noting that the Nvidia CEO was spotted partying and socializing with Alice Huang on multiple occasions. The report even claimed that some Nvidia employees wondered whether they had a “special relationship.”

Culper Research also theorized the China business that Nvidia lost to export controls had been rerouted through Southeast Asia, and that Megaspeed, a major chip buyer in the region, was secretly financed by Chinese tech giant Alibaba through shell companies. It pointed to financial records that showed Megaspeed’s total liabilities and equity had grown from $33 million at the end of 2023 to around $3 billion by the end of 2024, much of it in the form of refundable deposits from an unidentified source.

Financial Times reported Monday that documents show Alibaba lent money to Megaspeed through subsidiaries.

Culper is a short seller, so it stood to financially benefit from making these allegations, and those about possible illegal chip diversion have not been independently verified. Its report is available on the web and was posted to X back in May.