Chinese regulatory filings reveal that 193 servers containing export-banned Nvidia H800, H100, and H200 chips—valued at 485 million yuan ($73 million)—were installed at a Shanghai data center linked to Alice Huang, a corporate executive and alleged Chinese spy. The discovery follows the resignation of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang over an affair with Alice Huang, as U.S. lawmakers summon tech executives to investigate how millions of restricted chips entered China.
Banned Nvidia chip smuggling
- ▪Regulatory filings submitted to the People's Bank of China show that Shanghai Longteng Intelligent Computing pledged 193 servers worth 485 million yuan ($73 million) containing banned Nvidia H800, H100, and H200 chips at a Shanghai data center as collateral in January 2025
- ▪Aperia Cloud Services purchased 22 Dell servers containing Nvidia H800 chips restricted from export to China in 2023, which were diverted to a data center in Shanghai
- ▪Shanghai Longteng Intelligent Computing pledged 52 Super Micro Computer Inc. servers containing Nvidia H100 or H200 chips as loan collateral for the Shanghai AI facility in January 2025
- ▪Shanghai Longteng Intelligent Computing collateralized 119 Gigabyte Technology Co. servers as part of the 485 million yuan financing contract in January 2025
- ▪Shanghai Longteng Intelligent Computing procured computing servers worth 747 million yuan between May and June 2024 and installed them at the Yangtze River Delta Project in Shanghai
Alice Huang spy allegations
- ▪U.S. officials allege that Alice Huang was recruited by China's main intelligence agency to target Jensen Huang, learn U.S. AI plans, and lobby for relaxed chip export controls
- ▪The Yangtze River Delta Project data center in Shanghai is led by Kang Wei, a business associate reported as Alice Huang's romantic partner who attended a March 2025 government inspection
- ▪Singapore authorities released Alice Huang after determining they lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute her in relation to their Megaspeed investigation, allowing her to relocate to Beijing
- ▪Former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned after admitting to an extramarital affair with Alice Huang, an executive at Megaspeed International who founded Shanghai Longteng Intelligent Computing
US export control failures
- ▪Epoch AI estimates that approximately two million advanced Nvidia AI chips entered China during 2024 and 2025 through diversion schemes hiding their final destination
- ▪Former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been called to testify before U.S. congressional committees regarding Nvidia chip diversion to China
- ▪Approximately 600,000 Nvidia H200 chips are reportedly stockpiled in Hong Kong awaiting shipment clearance into mainland China
- ▪Epoch AI data shows that 275,000 Nvidia AI accelerators were imported to Malaysia in 2024 and 2025, serving as offshore compute access for Chinese firms
Corporate responses to diversion
- ▪Dell Technologies stopped all sales and support to Aperia International in February 2025 over unauthorized hardware diversion concerns, following the arrest of Aperia's CEO in Singapore on fraud charges
- ▪Megaspeed stated it is investigating its compliance with microchip export controls, while Malaysian authorities probe a Megaspeed subsidiary over potential AI chip diversion
- ▪Super Micro Computer Inc. stated that it sold all servers in compliance with U.S. export laws and maintains no affiliation with the Yangtze River Delta Project, a Shanghai data center linked to Alice Huang
- ▪Singapore prosecutors charged a fifth individual in November 2026 in connection with the criminal case involving Aperia Cloud Services
Chinese AI on banned chips
- ▪White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios stated that Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI used export-restricted Nvidia chips based on U.S. intelligence sources
- ▪Unemployment Labs research led by Will DePue found model weight configurations indicating that Chinese frontier AI models from Moonshot AI and DeepSeek were trained on export-banned Nvidia Blackwell GPUs
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