$4.8 Billion Hardware Trail Puts Megaspeed in U.S. Blacklist Fight

By Rebecca Stone

The New York Times reported that Megaspeed International’s Malaysian sister company bought at least $4.8 billion in advanced AI equipment from 2024 through 2026, putting the Singapore-based operator at the center of an alleged U.S. smuggling case.

At one Malaysian data center visited by U.S. investigators, some of that equipment remained boxed and uninstalled, The New York Times reported. The purchases and Megaspeed’s November 2025 import records have made a cloud-rental business central to Washington’s fight over Nvidia chip controls.

Megaspeed sits at the center of the Nvidia scandal that ended Jensen Huang’s tenure as chief executive. U.S. officials suspect former executive Alice Huang worked for Chinese intelligence and have examined whether Megaspeed helped route restricted Nvidia chips into China. Megaspeed denies wrongdoing; Huang has not been charged, and Beijing calls the spying claim a smear.

What does Megaspeed do?

Megaspeed builds data centers in Southeast Asia, buys Nvidia servers and rents their computing capacity. It describes itself as an Nvidia Cloud Partner in Asia-Pacific and offers access to GB200 NVL72 and HGX H100 systems. Chinese customers include Alibaba, which The New York Times reported was a legal customer.

Registered in Singapore in 2015, Megaspeed took its current form in March 2023 when Shenzhen-based web-game and cloud company 7Road split off its overseas operations, according to Singapore corporate records cited by Mothership.

The financial jump was steep. Filings cited by CNA and Zaobao put 2024 assets at $3 billion, up from $33 million in 2023, and revenue at $294 million, up from zero.

Who controls the company?

Singapore corporate records cited by Mothership show 10 million shares moving in March 2023 to Huang Le Limited, a British Virgin Islands company, and then to Swiftdata in November 2023. Swiftdata, formed a month earlier, became Megaspeed’s sole shareholder; its sole shareholder and director is Tan Yong Pong, who also serves as Megaspeed’s sole director, chairman and chief executive.

CNBC, citing Chinese records, reported that Alice Huang sold her own cloud business, Osmanthus, to 7Road in 2019. She served as Megaspeed’s managing director from March to November 2023. Nvidia has said Megaspeed is owned by a non-Chinese company with no Chinese shareholders.

Singapore’s government said it examined Huang in 2025 as the company’s then-chief executive, chairperson and one of its key controllers.

What did investigators find?

The Times, citing Malaysian import records, said the chips came from a California subsidiary of sanctioned Chinese server maker Inspur.

• November 2025 Malaysian trade records showed Megaspeed importing at least 17,544 Nvidia GB300 processors worth about $787 million, Bloomberg reported.
• Bloomberg’s analysis estimated Nvidia’s chip tallies undercounted sales to Megaspeed through hardware partners by roughly 50,000 units. Nvidia later said it had inspected additional warehouses holding the hardware.

Singapore police and customs opened an investigation in February 2025 into Megaspeed and several other companies over possible false declarations in server purchases; Singapore said those investigations remain ongoing.

In the United States, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security began a smuggling case that stalled after Nvidia’s general counsel contacted the department, while the Justice Department now runs a criminal inquiry, The Times reported.

Semafor reported on Nov. 12 that Justice Department probes of Megaspeed and Super Micro Computer examined Alice Huang’s role. MLQ.ai separately detailed Nvidia’s contacts with Commerce.

On Nov. 12, Tan said compliance is “a fundamental priority for the company,” that Megaspeed cooperated with BIS inspections and had hired a U.S. law firm to run a “comprehensive census” of its GPUs. The statement did not address Alice Huang.

Reuters separately found that affiliates Megaspeed set up in Delaware and Australia in 2024 listed a home address at a newsagency in rural Victoria.

What has Nvidia said?

Nvidia has said it thoroughly investigated and debunked earlier diversion allegations against Megaspeed last year. On Oct. 29, Jensen Huang told Bloomberg that Nvidia had reviewed the chips’ use and found no diversion to China, describing Megaspeed as an ordinary regional customer.

Bloomberg reported on Nov. 9 that Megaspeed remained an official Nvidia Cloud Partner. Fortune, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported that Nvidia added it to an internal block list in mid-2025. Nvidia has not publicly reconciled those two accounts.

Why is Megaspeed still off the Entity List?

On Friday, Nov. 13, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Treasury, the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Trade Representative’s office had favored adding Megaspeed to the Commerce Department’s Entity List for months. “But Commerce has the pen,” he said, adding that officials should explain the department’s internal processes.

Axios reported on Nov. 11 that Bessent confronted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in the White House Situation Room over why Megaspeed was not listed; The Times reported the same clash.

Bessent argued that the focus should be whether Nvidia knew its client and made a robust effort to prevent leakage. He said existing U.S. authorities were sufficient and merely needed implementation. Commerce did not immediately respond to Reuters.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies says the Entity List imposes highly restrictive export-licensing requirements, meaning Nvidia and its server partners generally would need a U.S. license to supply Megaspeed.

A CSIS analysis said that, as of late June 2026, BIS had gone eight months without an addition, the longest gap since 2008, after Commerce paused China-related export actions following the Trump-Xi summit in Busan in late 2025. Megaspeed remained off the list on Friday.

Official Nvidia Cloud Partner status and Nvidia’s no-diversion finding stand against the import records and an unreconciled internal block-list report. An Entity List decision would determine whether Megaspeed can keep expanding Nvidia-based capacity in Southeast Asia or must obtain U.S. licenses for Nvidia systems and server-partner shipments.