Key points
- Nvidia's lawyer reportedly invoked a top Commerce official
- What Megaspeed's website still says about the probe
- What Trump said about the FBI and Jensen Huang
Nvidia (NVDA) general counsel Tim Teter emailed Commerce Department investigators in August 2025 seeking information about their probe of Megaspeed, an Nvidia customer, The New York Times reported on Monday. Teter said a senior Commerce official had given Nvidia permission to reach out.
The Justice Department later asked Commerce to pause its work on the case, and Commerce complied, the Times reported. The newspaper said it isn't clear what prompted Teter's outreach or whether other factors led to the pause.
Nvidia shares were at $177.41 in premarket trading at 8:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday, down 0.7% from Monday's close of $178.67.
Megaspeed is a Singapore-based data center company that US officials suspected of smuggling Nvidia AI chips into China. Its former executive Alice Huang is the woman US officials have concluded was a spy for the Chinese government, according to the Times.
Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation on November 8 into reporting that chief executive Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. That day, he told employees he had been unfaithful to his wife, without naming the woman. The Times reported that he had acknowledged to the board that he was intimate with Alice Huang. The two Huangs aren't related.
Teter cited a senior Commerce official
The official Teter named was Jeff Kessler, the Commerce under secretary who oversees export controls and reports directly to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the Times reported. Investigators at the department's Bureau of Industry and Security were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked their superior, and some officials saw it as a breach of procedure that could taint the case.
Nvidia first contacted the investigators directly to ask for a meeting with one of them, a Commerce official told the Times. When they declined, Teter replied that he wasn't sure what the issue was, because Kessler had said Nvidia could talk to the bureau's employees. The investigators forwarded the exchange to Kessler. Hours later, he told them to keep handling the case strictly by the book, the official said. The official also said Kessler didn't order anyone to share information with Nvidia.
Kessler didn't respond to the Times. The Justice Department is now conducting a criminal inquiry into Megaspeed, the Times reported, and the department doesn't comment on continuing investigations.
Bloomberg adds a call about Alice Huang's detention
Separately, Bloomberg reported on Monday that Teter called Kessler in late summer 2025. He asked whether the bureau had played a role in Singapore's recent detention of Alice Huang, whom Singapore police had brought in for questioning and restricted from leaving the country. The bureau wasn't involved in that action, Bloomberg reported. Bloomberg said it's unclear whether Teter made any specific request about the bureau's own Megaspeed case.
In the weeks that followed, bureau staff were told to route all requests about Nvidia through Kessler or get his approval for outreach, and not to mention Megaspeed or its Malaysian subsidiary, Speedmatrix, in external communications, Bloomberg reported. It called the routing step highly unusual. In late 2025, the Justice Department, which was working on the case with the bureau, asked it to pause its efforts, Bloomberg reported. Bloomberg described that joint work as standard practice when a bureau investigation turns into a criminal probe. Bloomberg reported that the bureau "has not made any progress since then, despite the agency having enough evidence to move forward."
Bloomberg reported a gap in Nvidia's own figures, too. The chip counts Nvidia relayed to the US government undercounted the chips sold to Megaspeed through hardware partners by 50,000 units, according to trade records Bloomberg analyzed. Nvidia told Bloomberg in December 2025 that it had checked additional Megaspeed warehouses containing the missing hardware, but it declined to say how many chips it found. Megaspeed remains an official Nvidia Cloud Partner, Bloomberg reported.
What Nvidia and Commerce said
Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo told the Times that the company consults officials "to answer their questions, provide information we have gathered from the field, request their guidance and instructions and ask whether they have any follow-ups." An Nvidia spokesperson told Bloomberg that Teter didn't know about the affair when he called Kessler.
A spokesperson for the bureau told Bloomberg that "BIS conducts all enforcement strictly by the book" and that "enforcement is at an all-time high." Bloomberg said it's unclear whether Nvidia has communicated with the bureau or the Justice Department about the discrepancies.
Megaspeed's website still cites a Commerce inspection
Megaspeed's homepage on Tuesday still carried a statement dated December 23, 2025, written in response to an earlier Bloomberg article. In it, the company says that over the prior six months it underwent "multiple on-site inspections and reviews by key institutions," including the Bureau of Industry and Security, Malaysia's trade ministry, and Nvidia. Those reviews found "no evidence of any violations concerning the illicit transfer of chips or any illegal activities," the statement says.
The statement is dated after Teter's August email and around the time the Justice Department asked Commerce to pause, according to the two reports. Neither the Times nor Bloomberg says the bureau cleared Megaspeed. A Megaspeed representative told the Times that the company is conducting an internal investigation and that its repeated offers to cooperate with the US government went unanswered. The company told Bloomberg that Singapore's investigation "concluded earlier this year with no adverse action against Megaspeed."
| Date | Development |
|---|---|
| 2024 | US begins investigating Megaspeed and Alice Huang (Times) |
| Aug. 2025 | Teter emails Commerce investigators about the Megaspeed case (Times) |
| Late 2025 | Justice Department asks Commerce to pause its work (Times, Bloomberg) |
| Dec. 23, 2025 | Megaspeed says inspections, including one by Commerce, found no evidence of violations |
| Oct. 29, 2026 | The Times reports US officials suspected Alice Huang of spying |
| Nov. 8, 2026 | Nvidia's board opens its investigation of Jensen Huang |
| Nov. 9, 2026 | The Times and Bloomberg report on Teter's outreach |
Trump said the FBI is looking at "something else"
At the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump said, "I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he'll be in good shape," CNBC reported. He didn't say what the something else was. Trump also said he'd spoken with Huang that day, and that Huang told him he hadn't known about the alleged connection to Chinese intelligence.
Three House Republican chairmen asked Huang to reply by November 11 to their request for a closed-door briefing on November 18. Nvidia reports fiscal third-quarter results on November 17. The company first responded to the spy reporting on October 29, when it said it had investigated and debunked the Megaspeed chip-diversion allegations.
