A suspected Chinese spy was close to Nvidia's boss. Will the US blacklist her firm?
US officials believe Alice Huang of Singapore's Megaspeed worked for China. The US has not added a new firm to its trade blacklist since October 2025.
What happened
US intelligence agencies believe the Nvidia chief executive, Jensen Huang, has been targeted by an alleged Chinese spy who had done business with him, according to a new report by the New York Times.
US officials believe a Singapore business executive worked for Chinese intelligence. The New York Times reported on , citing unnamed sources, that Alice Huang, also called Huang Le, an executive at the data centre company Megaspeed, passed business information to Beijing. Officials had watched her because they suspected her of smuggling Nvidia chips into China.
Officials also found that she was close to Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, who is not related to her. That worries the White House because he is close to President Donald Trump, the report said. Nvidia said Megaspeed got “zero information relevant to national security”, and on China called the reports “nothing but smears against China”.
The US keeps a trade blacklist called the Entity List. Selling American technology to a firm on it needs a special licence. A committee led by the Commerce Department adds firms by majority vote, and each decision is printed in the Federal Register, the government’s daily journal. On it had no document naming Megaspeed, and the last new firms were added on .
That was weeks before a trade truce with China. As part of it, the US paused for one year a wider rule that stretches the blacklist to companies owned by listed firms. The pause ends on , but on both countries agreed to keep the truce until . Trump is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen on 18 and .
The ERC makes all decisions to add an entry to the Entity List by majority vote and makes all decisions to remove or modify an entry by unanimous vote.
Federal Register, Additions to the Entity List,
Sources: The Guardian (2, 3), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Federal Register (2, 3), White House, Al Jazeera
The Pattern
We looked for cases where US officials or the news publicly accused a foreign firm of helping American technology reach China against US export rules. Then we checked whether the US added that firm to its blacklist, and how fast. We found six such firms since 2022, and Megaspeed is one of them.
Show the other 4 cases
The Read
Megaspeed was first accused 381 days ago and is still off the list. The three firms that were added waited 50, 81 and 140 days, and YMTC may have waited longer, because others had asked to blacklist it earlier. The fastest took 50 days, while only 21 days pass between the spy report and the end of the Shenzhen summit. Since the trade truce began in , the US has added no new firm of any country, and both sides have agreed to keep the truce until .
There are reasons for doubt. Each time it was the same Commerce Department committee deciding. The three firms that were added were all accused under President Joe Biden, and the three that were not were accused under Trump. Megaspeed and Apex have stayed off the list through the whole truce. None of the six firms was tied to spying before, so a report like this one has not been tested. Apex was accused only 64 days ago, less than the 140 days YMTC took.
Disclaimer
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