Megaspeed's vacant offices raise questions about ties to Nvidia and China

The unusual global footprint of Megaspeed International, a Singapore-based company at the center of an Nvidia Chinese spy scandal, is fueling questions about whether it operates as a front for the Chinese government, according to CBS News. One of Megaspeed's leaders was Alice Huang, a woman with whom Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was having an affair and who is suspected by U.S. intelligence of being an asset of China's Ministry of State Security. Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday following the affair, which was first reported by The New York Times, and an Nvidia shareholder filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday alleging that Huang concealed the relationship and misled shareholders about national security concerns. President Trump stated this week that the FBI is investigating the romantic and business ties between the two individuals, who are not related. Nvidia's board said Sunday that it had no reason to believe company secrets or national security were compromised, though sources familiar with the matter told CBS News on Wednesday that the board was preparing to oust Jensen Huang. Megaspeed has been one of Nvidia's biggest foreign customers, purchasing nearly $5 billion in AI chips and advanced hardware over the past three years. U.S. investigators say that Alice Huang used industry contacts and shell companies to gain access to 240,000 chips banned for export into China, and the firm is now probed in the U.S. and Singapore for allegedly smuggling those chips. China expert Jacqueline Deal told CBS News that Nvidia's advanced AI chips could have ended up with the Chinese military. Megaspeed stated Thursday that it takes its compliance obligations under U.S. export control laws extremely seriously and is committed to working transparently with the government. Megaspeed's corporate headquarters sat practically empty according to The Straits Times, and questions have been raised about its outposts in Australia and Malaysia. Published reports revealed that the company listed a newspaper vendor as the director of its Australian subsidiary, while one of its Malaysia offices consisted of a dilapidated storefront outside Kuala Lumpur and another was tucked into a shopping mall. Corporate filings name Shanghai-born Kai Kang, a 29-year-old newspaper vendor, as the director of the Australian subsidiary, but Kang's newsstand is in Northern Victoria over 400 miles from Sydney, and his father told Australia's ABC News that he had never heard of Megaspeed. Megaspeed was originally incorporated in 2015 as 7Road International, a subsidiary of a China-based gaming firm, before being acquired in March 2023 by a British Virgin Islands shell company named Huang Le Limited, which shares the Chinese name of Alice Huang. The company was then renamed Megaspeed International, and Huang became its managing director before resigning by the end of October 2023, though an activist short-selling firm report cited Megaspeed employees who said Huang was still running the company. Megaspeed said in an official statement that it has undergone multiple on-site inspections and reviews by key institutions, including the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, and that investigations confirmed no evidence of violations regarding illicit chip transfers. However, Megaspeed also stated on Thursday that it had retained a leading U.S. law firm to independently verify its export control compliance practices.