Howard Lutnick’s Commerce Department is holding up efforts to blacklist Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud company under investigation over suspected shipments of advanced Nvidia (NVDA) chips to China, according to The Financial Times.
That would already be a serious fight over US export rules. But the company also has ties to Alice Huang, a former director accused of spying for Beijing who allegedly had a romantic relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Federal agencies want Megaspeed on the blacklist
The Entity List is a database that serves as a barrier to foreign entities trying to buy technology from America. US exporters require special licenses to sell their products to such firms, which allows the US government to deny such equipment to China for their military advancements.
The State, Energy and Treasury departments, alongside the Pentagon, reportedly pushed to add Megaspeed. Commerce chairs the interagency panel that makes listing decisions, with Defense, State and Energy voting as members. Treasury can participate in discussions without holding a formal seat.
Over the past two months, Commerce officials have asked other agencies for more information about some proposed additions. It remains unclear whether Megaspeed itself was among the companies requiring further evidence. Whatever the reason, the delay has left it outside the restrictions.
For more than one year, investigators have been looking at whether Megaspeed has been shipping controlled Nvidia processors into China. Issues relating to the blacklist process are noe bwing eyed amid the Alice and Jensen affair, which highlighted a classified government memo regarding their purported love affair. FT claims that Trump got briefed in May.
Former senior US export-controls official Chris McGuire said:
“It is mind-boggling that commerce knew months ago that Megaspeed is being run by a Chinese spy but did nothing to stop them from buying $4.8bn worth of Nvidia chips. I can’t come up with a single good reason for that inaction.”
He also argued that potentially untrustworthy purchasers should face licensing requirements under existing rules before receiving high-performance AI chips.
The department did, however, defend itself, saying it had “enforced aggressively across the board, including on smuggling advanced chips,” citing six investigations that resulted in “criminal charges against 17 defendants involving billions of dollars of smuggled chips.”
Nvidia cut off sales while Megaspeed faced scrutiny
Megaspeed traces its roots to 7Road, a Chinese gaming company that spun it off in 2023. It later operated as an authorized Nvidia Cloud Partner, able to purchase the chipmaker’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, for computing services.
The company did not manufacture all its products but relied on leased data centers in Southeast Asia, including Singapore and Indonesia. Data centers are capable of housing processors that train artificial intelligence algorithms and run complex software.
In Singapore, Alice was one of the Chinese nationals who worked as a director until November 2023. The current owner of Megaspeed is Swiftdata, which is a Singapore-based company founded shortly before her departure. Tan Yong Pong, a Singaporean, is the only listed director of both companies.
Megaspeed has been under investigation by the Singapore police since October 2025. The firm has been continuing its operation but under heavy regulatory pressure. Following the reports regarding alleged chip trafficking, the foreign operators of the data centers have canceled their lease agreements due to the risk of secondary sanctions.
However, Nvidia asserts that it did not wait for the actions from Washington. As per their statements, Nvidia halted all its dealings with Megaspeed over a year ago.
“Despite Megaspeed not being on the entity list or subject of an ‘is informed’ letter, we placed Megaspeed on our block list in June 2025, prohibiting any further sales or shipments,” an Nvidia spokesperson allegedly said. “That voluntary block remains in place.”
An “is informed” letter is a Commerce Department notice telling an exporter that it must seek a license for certain transactions. Nvidia says it imposed its own ban without either that notice or an Entity List designation.
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