Chip Barons, Spy Rumors and a 25% Cut for the State

Megaspeed International, the Singapore buyer of Nvidia's most advanced AI chips, has hired a US law firm to check whether it broke American export law. The firm will inventory the company's graphics processors and "independently verify" its compliance practices, according to a Nov 12 statement from director Tan Yong Pong, also known as James Tan. The company that moved the chips is now paying lawyers to certify that it moved them correctly.

Tan said Megaspeed "takes its compliance obligations under US export control laws extremely seriously." He said the company welcomed "appropriate government scrutiny." The Straits Times couldn't reach him for comment earlier. The statement arrived after the Financial Times reported that US authorities had weighed putting Megaspeed on a trade blacklist over possible chip diversion, then delayed a decision. Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said on Oct 31 that its own investigations remain ongoing.

Who Has the Power

At the center sits Jensen Huang, Nvidia's outgoing chief executive and, per the base reporting, one of President Trump's closest allies in Silicon Valley. Nvidia announced Thursday that Huang will step down. He had accompanied Trump to Beijing in May. Trump has called him an "honourable guy."

The money trail runs straight through the White House. In December 2025, Trump approved sales of Nvidia's H200 chip to China, with 25 percent of proceeds paid to the US government, over the objections of China hawks in both parties. Dexter Tiff Roberts of the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub told CNA the question is when Trump knew. "Trump set up a deal where they were getting money back for Nvidia sales to China, so it becomes an even more sensitive issue if the Trump administration knew," he said. CNN reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed Trump on the intelligence concerns during the May trip. Trump says he didn't hear about them then.

Axios reported that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick held up a planned crackdown on firms suspected of funnelling Nvidia chips to China. Meanwhile Reuters reported about 600,000 H200 chips sitting in Hong Kong, waiting on Beijing's import permission. AFP saw procurement notices showing a Chinese university linked to the country's defence establishment bought H200 chips through a third party in September and October.

What They're Calling Oversight

Huang has been asked to brief three House committees behind closed doors on Nov 18, the same day APEC leaders begin meeting in Shenzhen. Closed doors, once again. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons asked Lutnick, Rubio and White House chief of staff Stephen Miller to preserve all records on Nvidia's chip exports to China. Their letter warned the episode "raises significant concerns about the federal government's ability to effectively enforce our export controls and protect our national security."

A letter asking officials to keep their own paperwork is the reform lane in action. Analyst Steve Okun told Al Jazeera that Congress could pass the Remote Access Security Act, or Commerce could put controls on Megaspeed or require licences for chips sent to places like Singapore and Malaysia. That would strain US-China relations in 2027, he said, "but that's not going to happen next week." Carsten Holz of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology noted that using advanced Nvidia chips in Singapore data centres to serve mainland China customers was "not new information."

The Corporate Shell Game

The paper trail is a study in how ownership slips through borders. Megaspeed was previously 7Road International, a Chinese gaming company with ties to state-backed investors. Huang Le, also known as Alice Huang, joined as director and managing director in March 2023, around the time of the renaming. She left on Nov 10, 2023, the same day Tan and Kang Kai were appointed directors. Kang left the Singapore board on Dec 28, 2023, but his name still shows up in filings of Megaspeed's overseas subsidiaries. Alice Huang was reported to have had an affair with Jensen Huang. US officials suspect her of working for Chinese intelligence, which China denies. Those espionage claims remain allegations.

Beijing's foreign ministry called them "groundless speculation." Spokesperson Mao Ning said, "The US side should stop fabricating such 'spy' narratives as a pretext for imposing a technological blockade." Shares in Moore Threads, MetaX and Cambricon, China's leading makers of graphics processors, jumped nearly 10 percent Thursday. Okun called US-China relations "a stalemate at best."

Nobody in this story who stands to be hurt by any of it appears in it. The chips, the cut, the shell companies and the closed-door briefings all belong to people with titles. Whether the controls hold, the people deciding are the same ones profiting.