Megaspeed, chip firm at center of Nvidia scandal, pledges to cooperate with U.S. investigation

HONG KONG — Megaspeed, the tech company at the center of the Chinese spy scandal engulfing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, said Thursday it will cooperate with U.S. government investigations.

Megaspeed’s statement came as Nvidia’s board met to decide whether Huang, one of the leaders of the AI boom, will remain at the helm of the American chipmaker he co-founded and helped build into the world’s second most valuable company.

In its first statement since reports emerged about Huang’s extramarital affair with an alleged Chinese spy, raising concerns over U.S. national security and the future of the tech giant, Megaspeed said Thursday that it takes its obligation to comply with U.S. export control laws “extremely seriously.”

NBC News has reported that U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Alice Huang had an affair with the Nvidia CEO and was a Chinese intelligence operative.

She held a senior position at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company that was one of Nvidia’s biggest customers in Southeast Asia. Megaspeed is under U.S. criminal investigation for allegedly smuggling American-made chips into China in defiance of U.S. export controls.

Megaspeed said in the statement Thursday that it has “cooperated with inspections by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) and stands ready to cooperate fully with any other relevant U.S. government authority.”

It said that “Megaspeed is committed to working constructively and transparently with the U.S. government.”

China has dismissed the spying allegations as “smears” and on Thursday a foreign ministry spokesperson said that “the U.S. side should stop fabricating so-called espionage narratives as a pretext for implementing technological blockades.”

Megaspeed did not address the allegations surrounding Alice Huang, but said that “to further reinforce our commitment to compliance, Megaspeed has retained a leading U.S. law firm to lead a comprehensive census of its graphics processing units (GPUs) and independently verify its export control compliance practices.”

The company added that it “welcomes appropriate government scrutiny and is committed to demonstrating through concrete actions that it operates responsibly, transparently, and in accordance with applicable U.S. laws.”

Nvidia’s stock price has plunged since its 63-year-old chief admitted over the weekend to being “unfaithful” to his wife.

The company’s board was addressing Huang’s future, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. The meeting was taking place Wednesday evening and the White House was aware, one of the sources said.

The meeting followed a new report in The New York Times that Jensen Huang also had a relationship with an executive who reported to him.

The scandal also raises questions about how much U.S. government officials knew about Alice Huang and Megaspeed.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio circulated a memo to officials in the Trump administration this past spring outlining how U.S. intelligence showed that the Nvidia CEO was in a romantic relationship with a business executive who was an asset of China’s spy service, according to a person familiar with Nvidia and a former national security official with knowledge of the matter. The New York Times and the Financial Times first reported on this memo.

Alice Huang’s precise role and relationship with China’s spy service remains unclear, however. It’s possible she was not a career spy for China’s spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), but was asked to cooperate and share information based on her access to Jensen Huang, a former national security official with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told NPR that Alice Huang’s role still needed to be clarified.

Democrats will soon hold control of both the House and the Senate and, as a result, will have subpoena power.

On Wednesday night, as the Nvidia board met, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chris Coons, D-Del., announced they had written to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick with a request to preserve records on the subject.