Megaspeed Case Exposes the Limits of Singapore's Policing of the AI Chip Trade

Huang resigned on Thursday after admitting to an affair. He was reportedly involved with Alice Huang, who ran Megaspeed, a Singapore data centre company that became Nvidia's biggest buyer in South East Asia. US officials suspect it gave Chinese companies backdoor access to restricted chips through its data centres in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Megaspeed has said it has always acted lawfully. On Thursday it said it "welcomes appropriate government scrutiny" and is "committed to working constructively and transparently with the US government".

The case matters because of Singapore's size in Nvidia's business. It was the company's second-largest billing location last year, accounting for nearly a fifth of revenue, according to the BBC. Less than 1% of that revenue came from chips that actually entered the country, because Asian companies route orders through Singapore and ship the hardware elsewhere.

A Two-Year Probe With No Charges

In a statement on Thursday, the Singapore government said it had been investigating since February 2025 whether Megaspeed and other firms made false declarations about servers bought and exported through Singapore. The companies said the equipment was bound for Malaysia, but authorities suspect it ended up elsewhere.

The government said it asked US authorities several times for information from one of the companies under investigation. The BBC understands that company to be Supermicro, which supplied servers to Megaspeed. "Despite these repeated requests, Singapore has to date received limited information or assistance," the statement said. The BBC said it had asked the US State Department for comment.

Singapore also investigated Alice Huang, not for espionage but for any role in Megaspeed's suspected fraud. It held her passport for several months, found "insufficient evidence" of a crime and let her leave the country in February this year. No charges have been brought against Megaspeed or anyone linked to it. Investigations in both Singapore and the US are continuing.

Singapore does not ban transfers of advanced chips to companies abroad, although such transfers can breach US export controls. It says it does not enforce "unilateral export controls imposed by other countries" but expects companies in its jurisdiction to respect them. In a separate case, which followed US concerns that DeepSeek was buying Nvidia chips through third parties, it has charged four companies and five individuals with offences including fraud.

The 7Road Connection

The BBC checked corporate records in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. It found that in 2019 Alice Huang sold a gaming company and its subsidiaries to the Chinese gaming firm 7Road. In March 2023, a 7Road subsidiary in Singapore named her executive director, and the next day the company changed its name to Megaspeed. She ran it for eight months before transferring it to a Singaporean man.

C4ADS, a security analysis group based in Washington, told the BBC it considers Megaspeed's set-up an example of "Singapore-washing". Critics use the term for Chinese companies that use the city-state's clean reputation to obscure their origins. Winston Ma, an adjunct professor at New York University's School of Law, said Singapore gives Chinese firms a base near the mainland and a "neutral address" that global customers and investors accept. TikTok and Manus are among the Chinese-founded technology companies that have made Singapore their global headquarters.

China has long denied that its companies obtain restricted US chips illegally. In Washington, Senate Banking chair Tim Scott has asked Huang to testify on December 3 and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on December 10.