E-Paper
Alice Huang linked to businesses that worked with Nvidia's Chinese competitor Huawei: Report
Alice Huang, the suspected Chinese spy linked to Jensen Huang’s affair, has ties to firms that supplied Nvidia computing power to Huawei, a CNBC report says.
Prefer HTon Google
Alice Huang, the suspected Chinese spy with whom former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted to having an affair, has been linked to Chinese businesses that allegedly supplied Nvidia's computing power to its biggest Chinese rival, Huawei, CNBC reported.
On Thursday, CNBC reported on the findings of a private intelligence firm called Tesari that were exclusively shared with the business news outlet. According to the report, Tesari has found that Huang is connected with a "a tangle of interlocking corporations and transactions" that "ultimately provided computing power to Huawei in China."
CNBC said it reviewed documents that show businesses connected with Alice Huang "were linked with supplying Nvidia computing power to Huawei." It adds that the links start to surface around the same time she and former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang were first seen together in public in December 2023.
Deep Dive
Huawei, known for its close ties with the Chinese government, has been banned in the US over potential national security and espionage concerns. The complete ban was formalised by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in November 2022.
Also read: How Nvidia's board can remove Jensen Huang, and what his exit could mean for AI chip race
The CNBC report also notes that the ties between Alice Huang and Huawei was "designed to deliberately obscure the relationship."
Alice Huang's alleged links to Huawei
The link between Alice Huang and Huawei emerged from her co-ownership of a tech finance firm in China called Shanghai Hexi. Huang has been a co-owner of Shanghai Hexi since 2016, CNBC confirmed, citing business records furnished by Tesari for the analysis.
The report says that Shanghai Hexi owned 27 percent stake in a data centre company, Shanghai Century Longteng, from 2021 to 2024. Shanghai Century Longteng, in turn, owned 50.1 percent stake in Shenzhen Yifeng Technology Co., Ltd., a data centre facility located in Mainland China.
Shenzhen Yifeng Technology Co., Ltd.'s key customer was Huawei Cloud, the report claims. Huawei Cloud is a subsidiary of Huawei Technologies that is based out of Shenzhen. Alice Wang's Shanghai Hexi was also a guarantor of several loans that Shenzhen Yifeng Technology drew.
Also read: Jensen Huang to forfeit $108 million in unvested Nvidia shares after exit: Report
The CNBC report claims that the records that establish Huang's links to Huawei are from when she was based in Hong Kong, in 2019.
She later moved to Singapore, where she owned the company Megaspeed International. According to the CNBC, Megaspeed was formed from a subsidiary of 7Road, a Chinese gaming company to which Huang had reportedly sold a cloud business she owned in 2019.
According to a report published in The Information on Thursday, Megaspeed International sent billions of dollars' worth of Nvidia chip shipments to Chinese firms.
Since Alice Huang, Jensen Huang has been accused of having had affairs two other Nvidia employees, according to reports by Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.
