CHINA: In December 2023, a Chinese executive who goes by Alice Huang met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and a small group of colleagues at an Italian restaurant in Singapore.

In a photo of the previously unreported meeting, which was confirmed by The New York Times, Alice Huang smiled as she posed next to Jensen Huang, who was in his trademark black leather jacket. He held a glass of red wine.

For Alice Huang, there was reason to celebrate. Backed by wealthy investors in Shanghai, she had just restructured a company that would soon buy billions of dollars in Nvidia artificial intelligence chips. The U.S. government had barred Chinese companies from buying the advanced chips, but Huang had sidestepped this prohibition by creating a firm, Megaspeed, through a Singaporean shell company.

Her close relationship with Nvidia’s leader also appeared to smooth the way. Four days after the ownership change Megaspeed was named an Nvidia cloud partner, giving it access to the coveted components.

Their relationship is now at the center of a global geopolitical competition between China and the U.S. government to dominate AI. It has also shaken and captivated the tech industry on both sides of the Pacific, surfacing often invisible details of the fierce technological race, like spy craft and the human vulnerabilities of AI kingmakers like Jensen Huang.

The meeting in Singapore was a sign of how Alice Huang’s relationship with Jensen Huang goes back further than previously known. It also speaks to the close social and business ties that grew during years of tech collaboration between China and the United States, and how they have persisted despite the icy geopolitical divide of the past decade.

The Times was the first to report Jensen Huang’s dealings with Megaspeed and Alice Huang last year. Last month, the Times reported that U.S. officials had concluded she was a Chinese intelligence asset who had developed a close relationship with the Nvidia leader, and that President Donald Trump had taken no action when briefed on the situation last year. Last week, the Times reported that Alice Huang had been recruited to spy by China’s Ministry of State Security. On Sunday, Jensen Huang, 63, acknowledged that he had an affair with her, and Nvidia said it was conducting an internal investigation.

Many details of the relationship between Jensen Huang and Alice Huang, including when they met and when she may have been recruited by Chinese intelligence, are not known. (The two are not related.) But Alice Huang’s work with Megaspeed put her in the middle of a sprawling effort to accumulate AI chips across Southeast Asia and provide access to the technology to China’s companies.

Photos from her social media, which were verified by the Times, show that she and Jensen Huang met around the world over the past three years, including in Shanghai; at Nvidia’s Silicon Valley headquarters in California; at a golf resort south of San Jose, California, and in Taiwan.

After the 2023 meeting in Singapore, Alice Huang, whose Chinese name is Huang Le, used her experience and connections in the world of Shanghai finance to work her way into tech circles. She turned Megaspeed into a destination for Nvidia technology, working with a longtime business partner who was often introduced as her husband.

The success attracted the attention of authorities. By 2024, the United States had dispatched a Commerce Department official to check on her company. She was monitored by Taiwan’s government during her visits to the island, including when she appeared publicly with Jensen Huang. For part of 2025, she was not allowed to leave Singapore because of an investigation.

Behind Megaspeed was a network of wealthy tech investors in China with links to domestic data centers, the government and the defense industry. Between 2024 and 2026, the firm bought billions of dollars of Nvidia’s advanced AI technology, bringing Alice Huang further into Jensen Huang’s orbit.

Details about Alice Huang, much of which have not been previously reported, are based on a Times analysis of 15 years of corporate documents, as well as interviews with more than half a dozen people and government officials familiar with her and her business.

Alice Huang did not respond to a request for comment. Nvidia and Megaspeed declined to comment. China has denied the espionage claims.

For many years, Alice Huang’s life was rooted in the high-flying world of Shanghai finance. She mingled easily with tech executives from China and the United States alike, according to people who have met her.

In China, Huang is closely linked to a business partner named Kang Wei. Kang, a 51-year-old fund manager, has been introduced as Huang’s husband to Chinese investors and Megaspeed employees, according to people familiar with the matter. The Times could not verify whether the two are married.

Kang rose to prominence at a young age, earning a reputation as a savvy stock market strategist in the 2000s. Chinese financial media treated him as a sort of boy wonder. By the 2010s, he had moved into private equity, including investing in online gaming firms.

China’s securities regulator has fined Kang at least twice for failing to disclose his stakes in listed companies. He has also struggled with fellow investors for corporate control, according to regulatory filings. Kang has bragged about Huang’s connections to Nvidia’s Huang and used those ties to raise money for their businesses, according to one of the people.

Kang did not respond to a request for comment.

Alice Huang’s career mirrored Kang’s focus on finance. According to her online resume, she spent four years as a television reporter before working at HSBC’s private bank and CITIC Securities, a Chinese state-backed investment bank.

Occasionally, she appeared with Kang. In an August 2023 photo, the two visited a state-backed auto tech company in the eastern city of Nanjing.

The earliest corporate records bearing Huang’s name trace back to a small “sports and leisure club” company registered in 2010 inside Beihu No. 9, a private golf club in Beijing that drew officials and featured themed saunas, steam rooms and a buffet of foie gras, hairy crabs and Häagen-Dazs.

Over the next few years, Huang branched out, investing in a Chinese medical equipment maker that would list its shares in Hong Kong. She acquired her stake through an offshore company, corporate records show.

By 2020, Huang and Kang were known in some of Shanghai’s investment circles. They operated an interconnected web of companies to carry out corporate takeovers and invest in companies. That spring, their network landed a major project, helping build and operate an AI computing center in Shanghai for the internet giant Tencent.

That set the stage for Huang’s next effort: a push abroad to acquire critical chips.