Singapore Held Alice Huang’s Passport for Eight Months
Singapore seized the passport of then-Megaspeed chief executive Alice Huang in June 2025 and kept it for eight months while probing Nvidia chip shipments. A source says Washington gave no meaningful help, though Singapore says it asked the Justice Department and FBI.
Singapore held Alice Huang's passport for eight months, from June 2025 until February 2026, while investigating whether advanced Nvidia chips were being shipped to China, according to a source with knowledge of the matter who spoke on Friday, November 13. Huang was then chief executive of Megaspeed.
The source said the Singaporean government received no meaningful help from Washington in that time. U.S. officials were "not forthcoming" when Singapore asked for assistance, and no substantive help has been given to date, the source said.
Singapore's government said in a statement this week that it had approached both the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI for assistance.
How the probe unfolded
Singaporean authorities have been investigating since February 2025 whether Huang and Megaspeed worked with California-based Supermicro to ship servers fitted with advanced Nvidia chips to China, the source said. Megaspeed has denied any wrongdoing.
Huang flew into Singapore in June 2025 for a voluntary interview with investigators from the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security. That agency sits inside the U.S. Commerce Department and regulates exports of sensitive products. Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry said the Americans requested the interview as part of a post-shipment verification check, which tests whether goods reached their declared buyer.
Singaporean police interviewed Huang the same day and impounded her passport. The source said it is not known where Huang, a Chinese national, traveled from.
No charge, then a ban
By February 2026, police had not charged Huang with any crime and had to return her passport, the source said. The home ministry says she is barred from returning to Singapore because authorities judged she gave "inaccurate information" to downplay her role at Megaspeed.
The ministry said the suspected local offenses "pertained to potential false declarations in relation to the purchase of servers and other related offenses." Investigators have focused on whether she lied about purchases of Supermicro servers, which use Nvidia chips to run artificial intelligence software, data centers and cloud computing.
A second source familiar with the investigation said the servers may have gone to Malaysia. Singaporean investigators suspect "some or all" of them were then shipped on to China, that source said.
The ministry said it tried to contact Supermicro, which "provided limited cooperation."
The ministry statement came four days after Nvidia founder Jensen Huang admitted to an affair with a woman who, sources confirmed, was Alice Huang. The scandal toppled him from the helm of the company he built over three decades.
