Bloomberg: Firm Founded by Alice Huang Got Banned Nvidia Chips Installed in Shanghai

Bloomberg reported on Friday (November 13) that, according to documents it reviewed, a Chinese company founded by Alice Huang procured smuggled Nvidia AI chips that were installed at a data centre in Shanghai. The report says some of the servers were originally sold to an official Nvidia cloud partner in Singapore before reaching China.

193 servers pledged for loans worth 485 million yuan

According to People's Bank of China credit filings, a subsidiary of Shanghai Longteng Intelligent Computing pledged 193 servers as loan collateral in January 2025, worth 485 million yuan (about $73 million), with the equipment installed at a Shanghai data centre (the Yangtze River Delta Project facility). The pledged hardware included 22 Dell servers with restricted Nvidia H800 chips, 52 Super Micro servers with H100 or H200 chips, and 119 Gigabyte servers. The filings show some servers were originally sold to Aperia Cloud Services, a Singapore-headquartered Nvidia Cloud Partner. The documents do not say how the restricted chips were obtained, nor whether Alice Huang was personally involved after transferring her shares in Shanghai Longteng in 2017.

Another subsidiary bought 747 million yuan of servers

Company documents reviewed by Bloomberg also show another Shanghai Longteng subsidiary procured 747 million yuan worth of computing servers in May and June 2024 for the same Shanghai facility. Megaspeed, the Singapore firm where Alice Huang worked, featured the Shanghai facility in a 2024 investor presentation.

Investigations and wider context

The report comes as related investigations proceed in several places: the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan is investigating whether entities linked to Alice Huang took part in alleged efforts to move Supermicro hardware containing Nvidia GPUs into China; Singapore prosecutors charged a fifth person in the Aperia case on Friday; and Nvidia stopped all sales and support to Aperia International in February 2025 over unauthorised diversion concerns. Alice Huang is at the centre of the controversy surrounding Nvidia: founder Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive, president and board member on November 12, as reported on this site. The United States has restricted exports of advanced AI chips to China since 2022. Megaspeed has previously denied wrongdoing. Sources: Bloomberg, Bloomberg Law, Fortune, The Information.