NYT: US intelligence concluded a Megaspeed executive close to Nvidia's CEO was a Chinese asset; Trump briefed about a year ago, Commerce probe passed to DOJ

A finding sourced to anonymous officials, and the administration's choice

The report rests on anonymous officials and classified intelligence; it says surveillance tracked the relationship between Ms Huang and Nvidia's CEO, who were photographed together in Taipei in June 2024 and May 2025. As the reason no action followed the presidential briefing, the paper points to reluctance to disrupt Nvidia's China sales and trade negotiations. The substance of the intelligence finding, which agencies ran the surveillance and what information was passed had received no independent confirmation from other outlets as of 29 October.

$4.8bn in purchases and a hand-off from Commerce to Justice

According to trade records, Megaspeed's Malaysian sister company bought at least $4.8 billion of Nvidia-based equipment between June 2024 and February 2026, sourcing through the US arm of Inspur, whose parent is blacklisted, and renting compute to Chinese firms including Alibaba. The Commerce Department's investigation began in late 2024 after an official found Nvidia hardware still boxed at the company's Malaysian data centre, and was handed to the Justice Department this year. Singapore questioned and released Ms Huang in 2025, and no charges have been reported.

In an October 2025 letter Senator Tom Cotton described Megaspeed as a spin-off of a Chinese state-owned enterprise and asked Commerce to investigate more than $4.6 billion in Nvidia purchases. The new report layers a counter-intelligence dimension onto a known diversion case, and sits within the enforcement effort around South-East Asian transit hubs, where Malaysian customs continue to seize servers carrying advanced AI chips.

Nvidia's rebuttal and the congressional response

Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo said Jensen Huang's interactions with Ms Huang were 'not unusual or unexpected' and that regional cloud customers receive no information relevant to national security; the company told another outlet that 'the diversion allegations against this regional cloud were thoroughly investigated and debunked last year'. Megaspeed said it had retained outside counsel and was cooperating with the US government, while the White House, CIA and NSA declined to comment. Senator Elizabeth Warren said 'Huang and NVIDIA's board owe Congress answers' and called for passage of bipartisan chip-export legislation.