China denies spying on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, calls allegations baseless

China denies role in Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spying case

New Delhi: China on Monday dismissed claims that it had spied on Jensen Huang, chief executive of US chip giant Nvidia, calling such claims “baseless,” according to media reports from Beijing.

“We have responded to this matter previously. The narrative of a so-called Chinese spy is entirely baseless vilification and smearing,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a press conference.

The statement was issued after the board of US tech giant Nvidia announced that it had opened an investigation into reports alleging that its “founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.”

Singapore-based AI data centre company Megaspeed, for which the alleged Chinese spy worked, also denied allegations that it was involved in illegally shipping Nvidia chips to China, saying inspections by US and Malaysian authorities, as well as Nvidia, found no evidence of wrongdoing.

The operations of Megaspeed came into focus after a US probe found last year that a Chinese businesswoman named Alice Huang was targeting Jensen Huang as a spy, according to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. At the time, Alice Huang was said to be a top executive at Megaspeed International, which rents out computing power to other companies to train and run AI.

According to Megaspeed, it’s “a core business partner of Nvidia’s computing power cloud business in the Asia-Pacific region”. On LinkedIn, it says it has offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, with around two to 10 employees and 25 “associated members”.

The firm was previously called 7Road International, according to the Singapore government’s website, suggesting links to the Chinese gaming company 7Road.

The company issued an official statement in response to a Bloomberg article that raised questions about its operations. It said the report contained “misleading information and incorrect insinuations”.

“We are aware of the recent article published by Bloomberg which has raised concerns regarding our operations. We would like to clarify that the article contains misleading information and incorrect insinuations, including suggestions that we may have been involved in illegal chip transfers,” the company said in its statement.