China's MSS Allegedly Recruited Spy Targeting NVIDIA CEO

According to a New York Times report, the Ministry of State Security of China recruited a woman to spy on Jensen Huang, the chief executive of NVIDIA. The operation reportedly aimed to gather intelligence on NVIDIA's most advanced hardware and, beyond that mission, to encourage deliveries of high-end graphics processors to China.

Alleged recruitment, cover identity and mission

The report identifies the target as Jensen Huang and names the alleged operative as a woman known publicly as "Alice Huang" or "Huang Le." She is described as having served as a senior executive at Singaporean firm Megaspeed at least through 2023. According to the New York Times, Chinese agents from the Ministry of State Security, or MSS, recruited her to collect information about NVIDIA's cutting-edge hardware.

The newspaper says the MSS sought not only technical intelligence but also lobbying to persuade Huang to facilitate shipments of some of NVIDIA's most advanced GPUs to China, a request described in the report as a step beyond the primary intelligence task. The New York Times reports that Alice Huang developed what it calls a "close relationship" with Jensen Huang, although the story gives limited detail on the nature of that relationship.

Megaspeed's expansion and industry links

The operation is reported to have begun in 2024, when public photos of the two executives appeared and Megaspeed rapidly expanded its activities. U.S. intelligence agencies had placed Alice Huang under surveillance for at least a year, the New York Times reported.

The paper notes that Megaspeed's rapid, well-funded entry into the AI sector surprised some industry observers, though it adds that sizable investment in AI is not unprecedented. Megaspeed has business relationships that touch regional supply and assembly chains, including ties to Taiwan's Gigabyte, identified as a major assembler of NVIDIA chips, and operations that use NVIDIA chips to build data centers in Southeast Asia whose compute capacity is rented to Alibaba.

According to the report, Megaspeed invested in a cybersecurity subsidiary of China Electronics Technology Group, a state-linked group active in military electronic equipment.

The New York Times also reports that during the company's rapid growth one senior Megaspeed executive worked directly for the Ministry of State Security, according to people briefed on the matter.

Uncertain influence on NVIDIA and export outcomes

The report does not establish how much influence the operative actually had on Jensen Huang or on NVIDIA's decisions. It remains unclear what, if any, proprietary information was transferred or what operational impact the reported espionage had.

Separately, the story notes that in 2025 Jensen Huang persuaded then-President Donald Trump to approve exports of a greater number of NVIDIA graphics processors to China. The New York Times reported the recruitment and the operational details; the claims in this article are attributed to that reporting and to the sources cited by the newspaper.