Beijing denies spying on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

Beijing yesterday dismissed as “groundless speculation” a report that said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) was the target of a Chinese spy plot.

The article by the New York Times, published on Thursday, said that US intelligence officials concluded that a Chinese executive linked to a Singapore-based data center company had been funneling information to Beijing.

“The report in question is based on groundless speculation and is nothing more than an attempt to smear China,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) told a regular briefing.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks to Microducks, 25cm tall biped robots, during his keynote speech at the Nvidia GTC conference in Berlin on Wednesday last week.

Photo: Reuters

China is in a race for tech dominance with the US, which restricts the export to China of the most cutting-edge silicon chips, designed by industry leader Nvidia and used to train and run artificial intelligence (AI) models.

The data center firm Megaspeed was under scrutiny for possibly steering Nvidia AI chips to China, the report said, citing unnamed sources briefed on the matter.

However, the executive Alice Huang — also known as Huang Le (黃樂), and no relation to 63-year-old Taiwanese-born Jensen Huang — developed a close relationship with the Nvidia boss, the New York Times said.

That could have given her insights into US President Donald Trump’s thinking around AI, an issue likely to arise during talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) next month.

Trump was briefed on the intelligence findings about a year ago and chose not to act on the information, the report said.

Nvidia is the world’s most valuable firm thanks to the global drive to build data centers packed with specialist computer chips and other hardware that runs AI systems.

An Nvidia spokesperson yesterday said that Megaspeed was like any other regional customer and “Jensen’s interactions with Ms Huang are not unusual or unexpected.”

“Our regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information — not sensitive NVIDIA trade secrets — and zero information relevant to national security,” they said.

The spokesperson added that allegations the Singaporean company was smuggling chips to China “were thoroughly investigated and debunked last year.”

AFP attempted to contact Megaspeed for comment, but when calling the phone number listed on its Web site, the person who answered said they were unfamiliar with the company and that the number was a residential line.