Jensen Huang's affair puts Singapore's chip-hub image under scrutiny

Huang stepped down from the US chip giant following a board meeting on Thursday, after admitting the affair. The woman reportedly involved, Alice Huang, ran Singapore-based Megaspeed, which grew into South East Asia's biggest buyer of Nvidia chips and is suspected of giving Chinese companies backdoor access to them through data centres in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

Singapore's government said Thursday it has been investigating since February 2025 whether Megaspeed and other firms made false declarations about data servers bought and exported through the island. The equipment was said to be headed for neighbouring Malaysia, but authorities suspect it ended up elsewhere. Singapore says it repeatedly asked US officials for information about Supermicro, the US company the BBC understands was supplying servers to Megaspeed, and got only limited help.

It has yet to charge Megaspeed or anyone tied to the case. Investigators looked into Alice Huang over a possible role in suspected fraud, not espionage, and released her in February after holding her passport for months, finding insufficient evidence of a crime. Megaspeed says it has always acted lawfully, that inspections found no illegal activity, and on Thursday said it welcomes government scrutiny and will work transparently with the US.

The stakes are enormous for Singapore. It was Nvidia's second-largest billing centre globally last year, accounting for nearly a fifth of the company's earnings, yet less than 1% of that came from chips that actually entered the country. Since Washington restricted advanced US semiconductors from China in 2022, American officials have worried the island could be a route around the rules. Singapore has charged four companies and five individuals, including Chinese nationals, with offences such as fraud after US concerns that DeepSeek was buying Nvidia chips via third parties there.

Reporting by the New York Times described US officials visiting a Megaspeed data centre in Malaysia in 2024 and finding Nvidia technology still in its boxes. Bloomberg reported that last year Megaspeed imported 50,000 more chips than Nvidia could account for; Nvidia later adjusted its figures after warehouse visits. Both Singapore and US investigations are ongoing.

BBC checks of corporate records found Alice Huang sold a gaming company to Chinese firm 7Road in 2019, and that a 7Road Singapore subsidiary named her executive director in March 2023, renaming itself Megaspeed the next day. She ran it for eight months before transferring it to a Singaporean man, but the Washington-based group C4ADS assessed she stayed practically in control. C4ADS also called her setup a case of 'Singapore-washing' — Chinese firms using the city-state's clean image to mask their origins. Megaspeed has not answered BBC questions about its and Huang's China links. For Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, Singapore is neither pro-China nor pro-America but 'pro-Singapore'. Dylan Loh of Nanyang Technological University said that balancing act has become fraught, and Carnegie China's Chong Ja Ian said Beijing may question why Singapore is enforcing US restrictions at all.