Alice Huang may have held business stakes in Chinese companies that supplied computing power to Huawei while she was working with Nvidia, according to documents reviewed by CNBC. The connections were first identified by Tesari, a private intelligence firm that shared its findings exclusively with CNBC.
Tesari analysts say Alice Huang, whose Chinese name is Huang Le, sold a cloud business called Osmanthus to the gaming company 7Road in 2019. A 7Road subsidiary was later spun off as Megaspeed in 2023. The Information reported Tuesday that Megaspeed became a key Nvidia customer and helped facilitate at least $7.5 billion in Nvidia chip shipments to Chinese firms.
According to Chinese corporate records and media reports compiled by Tesari, Alice Huang co-owned the financial firm Shanghai Hexi from 2016. In 2021, Hexi acquired 27 percent of Shanghai Century Longteng, a data center developer, and held that stake until 2024. Century Longteng controls 50.1 percent of Shenzhen Yifeng Technology Co. Ltd., a data center whose key customer was Huawei Cloud. CNBC reported that Hexi guaranteed loans used to finance the Shenzhen facility.
CNBC reported that Century Longteng's majority owner, Zhejiang Century Huatong Group, began buying Nvidia chips in 2023. CNBC said it is not clear whether the Shenzhen data center acquired those GPUs.
Tesari analysts told CNBC they suspect the arrangement was designed to obscure the relationship between Alice Huang and Huawei. Brian Andersen, Tesari's vice president for national security applications, said the activity "warrants a national security and [technology] counterproliferation investigation." He said potential charges could include export-control violations, conspiracy and smuggling if investigators found that controlled equipment reached Huawei without authorization.
Nvidia and Huawei did not respond to requests for comment. Jensen Huang did not return a voicemail. Alice Huang could not be reached. Hexi did not immediately respond to a LinkedIn message.