Alice Huang (앨리스 황), who is suspected of being a Chinese spy, was reported to have had a private relationship with former Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang (젠슨 황). She was also found to have held stakes in companies that provided benefits to Chinese rival Huawei.

CNBC reported on the 12th, local time, that private intelligence firm Theasari confirmed such business links by analysing Chinese corporate registration data and local media reports.

The key point is that Alice Huang’s business network spans both a data centre that provided Huawei with computing capacity and Nvidia’s chip distribution routes. Huawei is a company that Nvidia in 2024 identified as a major competitor in artificial intelligence chips, graphics processing units, central processing units and networking chips.

Theasari uses AI to collect evidence and conduct national security-related investigations. It provides intelligence analysis services to private companies and the U.S. government. Brian Andersen (브라이언 앤더슨), vice president for national security applications at Theasari, said the activities revealed in Alice Huang’s business network require an investigation from the perspective of national security and curbing the spread of technology. If it is confirmed that controlled equipment was transferred to Huawei without permission, charges could apply for violating export controls, conspiracy and smuggling, he added.

Alice Huang sold her cloud business Osmanthus to Chinese game company 7Road in 2019. 7Road’s Singapore unit was later spun off as Megaspeed in 2023. Megaspeed later grew into a major Nvidia customer and, according to The Information, was involved in brokering supplies of at least $7.5 billion, about 10 trillion won, worth of Nvidia chips to Chinese companies.

Alice Huang was also a co-owner from 2016 of Shanghai Hexi, a financial firm that invests in technology and data centres. Hexi acquired a 27 percent stake in data centre developer Shanghai Century Longteng in 2021 and held it through 2024. The company was the controlling shareholder with a 50.1 percent stake in Shenzhen Yifeng Technology, a data centre operator in Shenzhen, China.

The key customer of the Shenzhen data centre was Huawei Cloud, a unit of Huawei Technologies. Hexi also guaranteed loans needed to finance the data centre. As a result, Alice Huang indirectly held a stake in a data centre that provided computing capacity to Huawei.

The business ties continued around December 2023, when Alice Huang and Jensen Huang were first publicly seen together. It was not confirmed whether the data centre actually secured Nvidia GPUs. Still, Zhejiang Century Huatong Group, the data centre’s controlling shareholder, began purchasing Nvidia chips from 2023. The company was linked to Hexi through a co-ownership structure of Shanghai Century Longteng.

Hexi sold its stake in Shanghai Century Longteng in 2024, but the link between Alice Huang’s business network and the Shenzhen data centre continued afterwards. Huang’s husband and Hexi founder Gang Wei (강웨이) joined Shanghai Century Longteng as an executive in 2022 and also attended an event to sign a contract with Huawei.

Theasari analysts raised the possibility that the complex business structure was designed to deliberately conceal relationships. It was not confirmed whether there was any illegal technology transfer.