Megaspeed, linked to Jensen Huang's alleged affair partner, sees assets surge 90-fold in a year

After Jensen Huang, chief executive of US chip giant Nvidia, admitted to an extramarital affair, attention has also turned to Alice Huang, the woman alleged to have been his affair partner, and Megaspeed International, a Singapore-registered cloud computing services company where she previously served as a director. Financial records show dramatic changes in the company's finances in 2024, with total assets surging within a short period.

Megaspeed was previously an Nvidia customer. The company had earlier drawn scrutiny from US authorities over suspicions that it helped China obtain advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips subject to US export controls.

According to financial records from Singapore's Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), the company's total assets stood at US$32.89 million (about S$42 million) in the 2023 financial year. By 2024, however, total assets had soared to US$2.97567 billion, an increase of about 90-fold in just one year.

Revenue also jumped from almost zero in 2023 to US$294.27 million in 2024, but its after-tax loss widened from US$21,283 to US$20.04 million. Meanwhile, total liabilities surged from US$22.93 million in 2023 to US$2.98575 billion in 2024, an increase of about 129-fold.

In terms of cash flow, the company recorded net cash outflows of US$2.97 million from operating activities and US$844,555 from investing activities in 2024. In 2023, it recorded about US$10 million in cash inflows from financing activities.

Despite the surge in assets, Megaspeed's financial statements for 2022 to 2024 all received unqualified audit opinions. The audit reports also did not identify any material uncertainty over its ability to continue as a going concern.

Megaspeed was incorporated in 2015 as 7Road International and renamed Megaspeed International in March 2023. Its office is in Ocean Financial Centre in the central business district.

Lianhe Zaobao (LHZB) has sent queries to Keppel REIT, which owns Ocean Financial Centre.

7Road is an online gaming company that started in Shenzhen, founded by Chinese national Meng Shuqi, also known as Meng Zhiyun. Its Hong Kong company was previously a shareholder of Megaspeed, and Meng also served as Megaspeed's director and general manager.

Megaspeed is now wholly owned by Swiftdata, which was incorporated in Singapore in October 2023. Swiftdata's declared principal activity is providing hosting services other than data centres, and its registered address is in Midview City.

Singapore citizen Tan Yong Pong was appointed a director of Swiftdata on 31 October 2023 and became a director of Megaspeed less than two weeks later. In November that year, Alice Huang ended her eight-month tenure at Megaspeed.

In response to a report by The Wall Street Journal that Singapore authorities were looking into Alice Huang's relationship with Jensen Huang and separately investigating her alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies, the Ministry of Home Affairs had clarified that the authorities were not conducting such investigations into Alice Huang.

However, Bloomberg on Tuesday (10 November) cited sources as saying that Singapore police had detained Alice Huang for questioning and restricted her from leaving Singapore. Tim Teter, who oversees Nvidia's legal and compliance functions, contacted Jeffrey Kessler, the US Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, to find out whether he was involved in the operation.

LHZB asked the Ministry of Home Affairs about the report but received no response.

Separately, a group of shareholders filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in San Jose, California, on Monday (9 November), local time. They alleged that Nvidia had defrauded shareholders by concealing Jensen Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, who is suspected of involvement in espionage.

The lawsuit alleges that Nvidia and Jensen Huang failed to disclose to shareholders his extramarital affair with Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive, as well as the potential national security concerns arising from the relationship and its possible impact on the company's business.