Alice Huang, the businesswoman reportedly at the centre of Jensen Huang’s affair, held stakes in companies that helped supply computing power to Huawei, Nvidia’s top competitor in China. That’s the finding of private intelligence firm Tesari, which shared its research exclusively with CNBC. CNBC says the connection hasn’t been reported before, and that it overlaps with the period when she and Nvidia’s then-CEO were first seen together in public, in December 2023.
The timing matters because the scandal has so far focused on chips flowing the other way. TechCrunch reports that Huang resigned as president and CEO on 12 November, days after admitting to an affair with an alleged Chinese spy. The Huawei link adds a second question: whether someone close to Nvidia’s leadership was also commercially tied to the company’s main rival.
How the trail runs from Hexi to Huawei Cloud
Tesari, which uses AI to collect evidence for national security investigations and supplies research to private firms and the US government, built its picture from Chinese corporate records and media reports. CNBC says it translated those Mandarin documents. They show Alice Huang, whose Chinese name is Huang Le, co-owning a financial firm called Shanghai Hexi as early as 2016. Hexi invests heavily in tech and data centres, and in 2021 it bought 27 percent of Shanghai Century Longteng, a data-centre developer, which it held until 2024.
Century Longteng in turn owned a controlling 50.1 percent of Shenzhen Yifeng Technology, a data-centre facility in mainland China. According to CNBC, the facility’s key customer was Huawei Cloud, and Hexi guaranteed the loans that financed it. That makes Alice Huang a part owner of a data centre selling computing power to Huawei, in CNBC’s reading, at the same time she was in business with Nvidia.
| Entity | Role in the chain | Link to Alice Huang |
|---|---|---|
| Shanghai Hexi | Finance firm investing in tech and data centres | Co-owner from as early as 2016; guaranteed the Shenzhen data-centre loans |
| Shanghai Century Longteng | Data-centre developer | Hexi held 27% from 2021 to 2024 |
| Shenzhen Yifeng Technology | Data-centre facility, 50.1% owned by Century Longteng | Key customer was Huawei Cloud |
| Zhejiang Century Huatong Group | Majority owner of Century Longteng | Hexi’s business partner; began buying Nvidia chips in 2023 |
It isn’t clear whether the Shenzhen facility itself obtained Nvidia GPUs. CNBC says its majority owner, Zhejiang Century Huatong Group, began buying the chips in 2023. CNBC also points to a puzzle in the arrangement: Huawei has access to Chinese-made chips, so why would it rent computing power from an outside operator? Documents CNBC reviewed link businesses connected to Alice Huang with supplying Nvidia computing power to Huawei around the time of those first public sightings.
Hexi left the data-centre developer in 2024, but CNBC reports that people in her network remain connected to the Shenzhen site. Her husband, Kang Wei, founded Hexi and became an executive of Century Longteng in 2022. CNBC says he attended the signing of the company’s Huawei agreement.
Tesari wants a national security probe
Tesari’s analysts told CNBC the structure is so convoluted that, based on past investigations, they suspect it was built to obscure the relationship. Brian Andersen, the firm’s vice president for national security applications and a former Homeland Security Investigations supervisory special agent, said the activity “warrants a national security and [technology] counterproliferation investigation.” Nvidia and Huawei didn’t respond to CNBC’s requests for comment, Jensen Huang didn’t reply to a voicemail, Hexi hadn’t replied to a LinkedIn message at publication, and Alice Huang couldn’t be reached.
Huawei is the kind of rival that makes any such link sensitive. CNBC describes it as a Chinese government “state champion” with close ties to the Communist Party, and Nvidia itself named Huawei a top competitor in AI chips in 2024.
A second thread: Megaspeed
The Huawei finding sits beside an older strand of the story. CNBC says Alice Huang sold a cloud business called Osmanthus to Chinese gaming company 7Road in 2019, and a Singapore-based 7Road subsidiary was spun off as Megaspeed in 2023. Fortune reports that The Information has alleged Alice Huang used her personal relationship with Jensen Huang to move at least $7.5 billion of Nvidia chips through Megaspeed and its Malaysian subsidiary, Speedmatrix. Megaspeed denies suspicions of illegal chip transfers to China.
Separately, CNBC’s Megaspeed explainer cites The New York Times as reporting that people briefed on US intelligence say she was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to gather information on Jensen Huang. That allegation is why policymakers were already watching the relationship.
The fallout has moved quickly. Our earlier coverage tracked the board investigation into Jensen Huang’s admission, the report that directors were preparing to oust him, and the shareholder lawsuit over Nvidia’s disclosures. The China angle also shapes Nvidia’s product decisions, as with the 24GB RTX 5080 reportedly shelved for the Chinese market.
CNBC’s live blog headline says Huang has agreed to testify before Congress, so these links may get a public airing. For now, the Huawei connection rests on Tesari’s analysis of corporate records as relayed by CNBC, and none of the companies named has commented.
Is Alice Huang confirmed to be a Chinese spy?
No. The claim comes from people briefed on US intelligence, cited by The New York Times and relayed by CNBC, and it hasn’t been publicly proven. Alice Huang couldn’t be reached by CNBC for this story.
What could investigators charge if wrongdoing is found?
Andersen told CNBC that if the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security and Homeland Security Investigations found that anyone transferred controlled equipment to Huawei without authorisation, potential charges could include export-control violations, conspiracy and smuggling. That is his assessment, not an announced investigation.
Who is running Nvidia now?
CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO until the board finds a permanent successor, and she remains CFO.
