Financial firm Hushi → investment in developer Longteng → control of data center Yifeng

Yifeng is a key customer of Huawei Cloud; Longteng's largest shareholder Huatong bought Nvidia chips

Huawei is both an Nvidia rival and a US Commerce Department sanctions target, raising concerns over chip circumvention

Alice Huang, alleged mistress of former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and suspected Chinese spy, leaves a restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, with Huang in May last year. [Reuters]
Alice Huang, alleged mistress of former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and suspected Chinese spy, leaves a restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, with Huang in May last year. [Reuters]

Alice Huang, the alleged mistress of former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and a suspected Chinese spy, indirectly held a stake in a data center linked to Huawei — China's leading telecommunications equipment and IT company and a direct rival to Nvidia in AI semiconductors.

According to a corporate intelligence analysis by private intelligence firm Tessari published by CNBC on Thursday (local time), Alice Huang — known in China as Huang Le — co-owned a Chinese financial company called Shanghai Hushi since 2016. The firm, which invests in technology companies and data centers, was founded by her husband Kang Wei, and Alice at one point served as an executive there.

In 2021, Hushi acquired a 27 percent stake in Shanghai Century Longteng, a data center developer. Longteng holds a controlling 50.1 percent stake in Shenzhen Yifeng Technology, a data center facility. Hushi retained its stake in Longteng through 2024.

The primary customer of the Yifeng data center is Huawei Cloud, a subsidiary of Huawei Technologies headquartered in Shenzhen. The arrangement effectively placed Alice Huang in a business relationship with Huawei through a chain running from Hushi, the investment firm, to Longteng, the data center developer, to Yifeng, the data center facility. Beyond the equity investment, Hushi also provided a loan guarantee for financing at the Yifeng data center.

Alice Huang is separately under suspicion of having channeled advanced Nvidia semiconductors to Chinese companies through a Singapore-based firm called Megaspeed. Megaspeed is a subsidiary of Chinese gaming company 7Road, to which Alice sold her cloud company Osmanthus in 2019.

Huawei is the Chinese company Nvidia identified in 2024 as a major competitor in AI semiconductors. It is also subject to US Commerce Department export controls on American-made semiconductors and telecommunications equipment, citing national security concerns. The findings raise the possibility that Huawei obtained Nvidia GPUs through the data center operator, circumventing US government sanctions.

A separate potential channel through which Huawei may have received Nvidia GPUs has also come to light. Hushi maintained a business partnership with Zhejiang Century Huatong Group, which holds the largest stake in Longteng — the same developer in which Hushi held its 27 percent share. Huatong began purchasing Nvidia semiconductors in 2023.

Although Hushi has since divested its stake in Longteng, Alice's husband Kang Wei became a Longteng executive in 2022 and was present when Longteng signed an agreement with Huawei.

CNBC noted that Alice was, at minimum, "a person who owned a portion of a data center that was providing computing power to Huawei," and that these developments in China unfolded at roughly the same time Alice and Jensen Huang were first seen together in public — in late 2023.

Tessari told CNBC that the complexity of the connections between Alice Huang and Huawei raises the possibility that the relationship was deliberately structured to conceal it.

Brian Anderson, a Tessari vice president and former special agent with US Homeland Security Investigations, said the activities uncovered while mapping Alice's network "represent the type of conduct that warrants a national security and technology proliferation investigation."

Anderson added that if the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security or Homeland Security Investigations found evidence that someone had transferred export-controlled equipment to Huawei without authorization, applicable charges could include export control violations, criminal conspiracy and smuggling.


yckim6452@heraldcorp.com