Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy reportedly romantically involved with Nvidia's ousted CEO Jensen Huang, may have held ownership stakes in Chinese businesses that benefited Huawei, Nvidia's biggest competitor in China, at the same time she was doing business with Nvidia, according to findings shared exclusively with CNBC by the private intelligence firm Tesari.
Tesari, which uses artificial intelligence to gather evidence and specializes in national security investigations worldwide, provides intelligence research to private companies and the U.S. government. Its analysts were the first to uncover the connection between Alice Huang and Huawei.
The previously unreported entanglement may raise questions about Alice Huang's intent and conduct in her relationship with the CEO, and about whether Jensen Huang knew his romantic partner was closely connected to his competition. Jensen Huang has acknowledged having an affair, though the precise timing of the relationship is unknown.
Huawei is regarded as a Chinese government "state champion" in technology and telecommunications, receiving enormous financial backing from Beijing that allows it to lower prices and undercut global competitors. It is considered central to China's push for global technical dominance and is closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party. In 2024, Nvidia identified Huawei as a top competitor, specifically in artificial intelligence chips including graphics processing units, central processing units and networking chips.
"This activity, which surfaced through our analysis of Alice's network, warrants a national security and [technology] counterproliferation investigation," said Brian Andersen, Tesari's vice president for national security applications and a former supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations. He said that if the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry Security and Homeland Security Investigations found evidence anyone transferred "controlled equipment" to Huawei without authorization, potential charges might include export-control violations, conspiracy and smuggling.
According to Chinese corporate records and media reports compiled by Tesari, Alice Huang, whose Chinese name is Huang Le and who was based in Hong Kong at the time, sold a cloud business she owned called Osmanthus to Chinese gaming company 7Road in 2019. A Singapore-based subsidiary of 7Road was spun off as Megaspeed in 2023. Megaspeed went on to become a key Nvidia customer, helping facilitate at least $7.5 billion in Nvidia chip shipments to Chinese firms, The Information reported Tuesday.
Alice Huang also became a co-owner as early as 2016 of a financial firm called Shanghai Hexi, which invests heavily in tech and data centers. In 2021, Hexi acquired 27 percent of Shanghai Century Longteng, a data center developer, holding that stake until 2024. Century Longteng owned a controlling 50.1 percent stake in a mainland China data center facility called Shenzhen Yifeng Technology Co. Ltd., whose key customer was Huawei Cloud, the Shenzhen-based subsidiary of Huawei Technologies. Hexi also guaranteed the loans financing the Shenzhen data center.
It is not clear whether the Shenzhen data center acquired Nvidia GPUs, but its majority owner, Zhejiang Century Huatong Group, began purchasing the chips in 2023. That company is a business partner of Hexi through their joint ownership of Century Longteng. The arrangement made Alice Huang a part owner of a data center providing computing power to Huawei at around the same time she and Jensen Huang were first publicly seen together, in December 2023. Tesari analysts told CNBC the connection is so convoluted they suspect it was designed to deliberately obscure the relationship.
Hexi exited its stake in the data center developer in 2024, but individuals in Alice Huang's network remain connected to the Shenzhen facility. Her husband Kang Wei, a longtime business associate who founded Hexi, where she previously held an executive role, became an executive of Century Longteng in 2022 and attended the company's signing of the Huawei agreement.
Nvidia and Huawei did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment. Jensen Huang did not respond to a voicemail left on a mobile phone. Alice Huang could not be reached, and Hexi did not immediately respond to a message sent via its LinkedIn page outside normal business hours.
