Short Seller Flagged Jensen Huang's Closeness to Megaspeed Executive in May; Nvidia Shares Closed Down 4.3%

Since Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation into CEO Jensen Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, attention has shifted to a report that raised the same questions months earlier. Culper Research, a New York short seller, published "Nvidia: The China Problem" on May 13. It is now being read very differently.

The market reaction came Monday, Nov. 9. Nvidia shares fell as much as 8.79% intraday to $170.24, then closed down 4.3%.

What Culper wrote in May

The 40-page report disclosed that Culper was short Nvidia. Its stated thesis was about revenue, not romance: "This is not a bet against AI. We are short Nvidia for one reason: the Company has a significant China problem."

Culper estimated that more than 20% of Nvidia's fiscal 2026 compute revenue was tied to China. Nvidia had said its China data-center business fell to zero after the April 2025 export restrictions. Culper alleged the demand was rerouted through Southeast Asian intermediaries, and that Nvidia's practice of reporting revenue by customer headquarters hid where the hardware ended up.

The report singled out Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud and data-center company. Its balance sheet grew from about $33 million at the end of 2023 to roughly $3 billion at the end of 2024. About $2.9 billion of that was refundable deposits from an unnamed source.

Trade records cited by Culper showed Speedmatrix, a Megaspeed subsidiary, imported $4.6 billion of products between December 2024 and January 2026, including $4 billion from Nvidia partner Aivres. Another partner, Giga Computing, shipped $511 million of equipment, largely to Speedmatrix and Novagate Cloud, which Culper called an apparent Megaspeed offshoot.

The report then turned personal. It said Jensen Huang "seems to have quite literally walked alongside Megaspeed at every step, while maintaining an uncomfortably close relationship with Megaspeed's Alice Huang, a Chinese national." It cited a party in Taiwan in June 2024 and a restaurant sighting in Taiwan in May 2025. It also quoted a Megaspeed employee who called the relationship "very close" and a former Nvidia employee who said colleagues wondered about a "special relationship."

Nvidia stock rose more than 2% the day the report came out.

What has been added since

The Financial Times reported Monday that documents show Alibaba lent money to Megaspeed through subsidiaries. Culper had inferred Alibaba-linked money was behind the deposits, but its report did not document a transfer. The FT's reporting is the first documentary support for that part of the theory.

The FT also reported that an intelligence-based memo said Jensen and Alice Huang had been romantically involved and that she was tasked with encouraging him to push for looser export restrictions. The New York Times reported that China's Ministry of State Security recruited her to learn about him and shape his views on selling AI chips to Chinese firms. The FT reporting did not establish that Jensen Huang knew of any alleged intelligence activity.

Huang acknowledged the affair in a letter to employees over the weekend. "I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children," he wrote. "There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry." He said he would cooperate with the investigation. The memo did not name the woman. Huang had earlier described his interactions with Alice Huang as routine business contacts.

Megaspeed became an official Nvidia Cloud Partner in 2023, per Bloomberg, and bought more than $4.8 billion of Nvidia chips over roughly two years, per the Associated Press. The Wall Street Journal reported that employees said Alice Huang kept running the company after she formally resigned following Megaspeed's November 2023 sale to Swiftdata. Axios reports the Commerce and Justice Departments have investigated whether Megaspeed helped Chinese companies obtain advanced Nvidia processors in violation of export controls.

The denials and the caveats

Nvidia's board said it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised and expressed confidence in Huang. Beijing denied that Alice Huang was an intelligence asset and called the allegations "nothing but smears against China." Trump told reporters on Air Force One that Huang is an "honorable guy."

Culper has an obvious financial interest in Nvidia's decline, and its claims of illegal chip diversion have not been independently verified. Its record is not empty, though. Its 2020 reports on CytoDyn called then-CEO Nader Pourhassan the "chief promotion officer." He was charged with fraud and insider trading in 2022 and sentenced to 30 months in prison in January.

No charges have been announced against Huang, Alice Huang or Nvidia.

What comes next

Three Republican House committee chairs have requested a closed-door briefing with Huang on Nov. 18 about his interactions with Alice Huang and how Nvidia protects itself against foreign threats. Trump is scheduled to meet Xi on Nov. 18-19 on the sidelines of the APEC gathering in Shenzhen.

The open question is the one Culper's revenue thesis raised before any affair surfaced: whether Chinese demand kept flowing to Nvidia through Megaspeed after the export rules tightened. The board's investigation and the congressional briefing are where that question gets tested.