Nvidia founder and chief executive Jensen Huang stepped down from the chipmaker on Thursday after admitting he had an affair, an admission that has turned a personal scandal into a commercial and national-security problem for Singapore. The woman at the center of the affair, Alice Huang — a Singapore-based businesswoman suspected of spying for China — ran Megaspeed, a data-center company that grew into the largest buyer of Nvidia chips in Southeast Asia and is suspected of giving Chinese firms backdoor access to that hardware through facilities in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
Huang’s departure lands at the intersection of two stories Singapore has spent years keeping apart: its cultivation as a trusted, neutral venue for global business, and the physical reality that some of the most tightly controlled technology in the world moves through its warehouses, booking systems and corporate registry.
A billing hub, not a destination
For decades the city-state has painstakingly built a reputation as an open, business-friendly economy with easy access to both American and Chinese markets. The AI boom made that position lucrative. Singapore was Nvidia’s second-largest billing center in the world last year, accounting for nearly a fifth of what the US chipmaker earns. Yet less than 1% of those earnings came from chips that actually entered Singapore. The island functions as a hub where many Asian companies place orders and direct shipments elsewhere.
Washington has been wary of that arrangement since 2022, when the United States restricted exports of advanced American semiconductors to China and barred Chinese companies from acquiring them. US officials have worried that intermediaries in third countries — Singapore among them — could give Chinese buyers a route around the controls.
The Megaspeed case
Megaspeed became the focal point. Operating from Singapore, it built data-center capacity across Southeast Asia and became Nvidia’s biggest customer in the region. Investigators suspect it provided Chinese companies with indirect access to the chips through its data centers in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Singapore does not prohibit companies from transferring advanced AI chips to buyers abroad, but such moves can breach US export rules. The government has said it does not enforce “unilateral export controls imposed by other countries,” while expecting every company within its jurisdiction to respect those regulations.
Enforcement has produced results in other cases. Singapore has charged four companies and five individuals, including Chinese nationals, with offenses that include fraud, following US concerns that the Chinese AI developer DeepSeek had been buying Nvidia chips from third parties in Singapore, among other places.
Megaspeed proved harder to pursue. In a statement released on Thursday, the government said that since February 2025 it had been examining whether Megaspeed and other firms made false declarations about data servers purchased and exported through Singapore. The companies stated the equipment would end up in neighboring Malaysia; Singapore authorities suspect the final destinations were elsewhere. The statement also disclosed that Singapore repeatedly asked US authorities for help obtaining information from one of the companies under investigation, US-based Supermicro, which supplied computer servers to Megaspeed. “Despite these repeated requests, Singapore has to date received limited information or assistance,” the government said.
Investigators also examined Alice Huang, not for espionage but for any possible role in Megaspeed’s suspected fraud. They found “insufficient evidence” of a crime and let her leave Singapore in February this year, after holding her passport for several months. Nearly two years after the probe opened, no charges have been filed against Megaspeed or any company or person linked to the case. The Singaporean and US investigations are both still running.
The public evidence remains fragmentary. In 2024, US officials visited a data center in Malaysia owned by Megaspeed and saw Nvidia technology still in its boxes, heightening concern that the company was shipping high-end chips onward rather than installing them on site. In 2025, Megaspeed appeared to have imported 50,000 more chips than Nvidia’s own records could account for; Nvidia later revised its figures after visiting additional warehouses.
Megaspeed says it has always acted lawfully and that previous inspections by authorities turned up no evidence of illegal activity. On Thursday the company said it “welcomes appropriate government scrutiny” and is “committed to working constructively and transparently with the US government.” Beijing has long rejected accusations that Chinese companies and institutions obtain high-end American chips illegally.
A “neutral address”
How Megaspeed and Alice Huang arrived in Singapore points to a different vulnerability created by the same openness. The city-state has become a preferred base for Chinese companies, with tech firms such as TikTok and Manus making it their global headquarters. Beyond the ease of doing business, Singapore offers a population that is predominantly ethnic Chinese and largely views China favorably. For a Chinese firm, it provides a base near the mainland and a “neutral address” that global customers and investors accept, said Winston Ma, an adjunct professor at New York University’s School of Law.
Critics say the downside is “Singapore-washing,” in which Chinese companies borrow the city-state’s clean image to blur their origins, reduce suspicions and, in some cases, cover up dubious activity. The Washington-based security analysis group C4ADS assessed that Alice Huang’s creation of Megaspeed fit that pattern.
Corporate records in China, Hong Kong and Singapore show that in 2019 she sold a gaming company and its subsidiaries to the Chinese gaming firm 7Road. In March 2023, a Singapore subsidiary of 7Road named her as its executive director. The next day the entity changed its name to Megaspeed. She was in charge for eight months before transferring the company to a Singaporean man. During that period Megaspeed went through what C4ADS called “a critical period of corporate restructuring and regional expansion,” and her corporate relationships raised questions about whether “Megaspeed’s Singaporean identity is genuine or effectively Chinese-controlled.” The group assessed that she remained “practically in control” after the transfer, citing her links to Megaspeed through another company and LinkedIn posts in which she continued to identify herself as its “chairwoman” at conferences. Megaspeed has not answered questions about the company’s and Alice Huang’s ties to China and the Chinese government.
Walking a narrower tightrope
“For the longest time, Singapore has managed to enjoy the best of both worlds with excellent relations with US and China,” said Dylan Loh, a lecturer in politics and international studies at Nanyang Technological University. Singapore has long positioned itself as a neutral party between the two superpowers, and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has insisted the country is neither pro-China nor pro-America but “pro-Singapore.” Loh said that balancing act “has now fast become very difficult to manage and sometimes quite fraught too” as the US-China dispute concentrates on chips.
Chong Ja Ian, a Singaporean political scientist and non-resident scholar with Carnegie China, said Beijing may ask why Singapore is investigating matters that flow from US restrictions, and whether the government is siding with American interests. Washington, in turn, might read Singapore’s latest statement as “pushing blame” onto the US, which could lead to backlash from the White House. “Singapore has made a policy position not to take sides. But by not choosing a side, they run the risk of being seen as complicit,” he said.
“This is not the first or last time Singapore will be caught between the US and China,” said Benjamin Ho, an assistant professor and China expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. “This is the price that an open economy has to grapple with — you get caught in the middle when things turn sour.”
For now the Megaspeed case remains open on both sides of the Pacific, with no charges filed and the US assistance Singapore says it needs still in question. Singapore’s standing as a billing center rests on continued access to American-designed hardware, and its standing as a trusted intermediary rests on appearing able and willing to police how that hardware moves. The affair that ended Jensen Huang’s tenure at Nvidia has settled neither question — nor the larger one of how American chips reach Chinese buyers.