Alice Huang, the businesswoman at the center of the controversy surrounding former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, held indirect stakes in Chinese companies linked to a data center that served Huawei, according to a CNBC report published Friday.
Huawei has been identified by Nvidia as one of its leading competitors in China, with Jensen Huang himself previously describing the company as highly competitive. Huawei remains subject to US government restrictions over national security concerns.
How Alice Huang was linked to Huawei
According to Chinese corporate records reviewed by intelligence firm Tesari and cited by CNBC, Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, became a co-owner of Shanghai Hexi, an investment firm focused on technology and data centers, as early as 2016. In 2021, Hexi acquired a 27% stake in Shanghai Century Longteng, a data center developer.
Century Longteng, in turn, held a controlling 50.1% interest in Shenzhen Yifeng Technology, which operated a data center facility in mainland China. The primary customer of that Shenzhen facility was Huawei Cloud, the cloud computing division of Huawei Technologies.
Hexi also provided guarantees for loans used to finance the facility, giving Alice Huang an indirect financial interest in infrastructure that supplied computing capacity to Huawei. Hexi subsequently exited its stake in Century Longteng in 2024.
The period of Alice Huang's business involvement in the data center companies overlapped with the time when she and Jensen Huang were first publicly seen together, around December 2023. US authorities suspect Alice Huang of acting on behalf of the Chinese government.
However, the CNBC report did not establish that the data center had obtained restricted Nvidia chips. It noted that a related company began purchasing Nvidia processors in 2023. Moreover, in 2019, Alice Huang sold a cloud computing business called Osmanthus to Chinese gaming company 7Road.
A Singapore-based subsidiary of 7Road was subsequently renamed Megaspeed. The company would later become a significant Nvidia partner in the region. Megaspeed is under investigation over allegations that it was involved in the illegal transfer of restricted Nvidia chips to China. Investigators are also examining possible links to Chinese intelligence operations. The company has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
Huawei remains a major Nvidia competitor in China
The revelations also bring renewed attention to Huawei's growing position in China's artificial intelligence chip market. Nvidia has identified Huawei as a leading competitor, particularly in artificial intelligence chips, graphics processors and related technologies.
In regulatory filings, Nvidia has listed Huawei among its key rivals in China, where the Chinese company has gained ground in the domestic AI chip market amid US export restrictions on advanced Nvidia products. Huawei has faced extensive restrictions from Washington for several years over national security concerns. The company was placed on the US Entity List in 2019, significantly limiting its access to American technology.
Earlier, The Information reported that Nvidia chips worth at least $7.5 billion had been delivered to Chinese firms through the relationship between Jensen Huang and Alice Huang. In 2022, the Federal Communications Commission also banned Huawei from selling telecommunications equipment in the United States, citing risks to data security and national communications infrastructure.
The latest revelations add another layer to the scrutiny surrounding Jensen Huang's reported personal relationship with Alice Huang. The former Nvidia CEO has agreed to testify before Congress about the matter.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
