New Delhi: Long before Alice Huang made global headlines over her intimate relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and alleged ties to Chinese intelligence, she had already built a high-profile—and controversial—career inside China’s financial sector.
According to a report by the Financial Times, Huang spent nearly a decade working closely with Chinese financier Kang Wei. The two were not only business partners but also romantic partners, widely regarded as a power couple in Chinese financial circles—with some associates even assuming they were married. However, Kang’s repeated run-ins with financial regulators have cast fresh scrutiny over the networks Alice Huang operated within before transitioning into the artificial intelligence industry.
From State Media Journalist to Finance Executive
Born in a rural area of China’s Hunan province, Alice Huang began her career as a journalist with China’s state-owned broadcaster, CCTV. In the mid-2000s, she moved to Hong Kong to pursue media studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, where a former classmate remembered her as “well-liked, easygoing, and ambitious”.
She later pivoted to finance, holding roles at HSBC and Citic Securities’ credit trading division. In 2015, she joined Hexi Capital, a private equity firm founded by Kang Wei in 2010 that invested across gaming, technology, and eventually data centres.
A Partner Plagued by Regulatory Scandals
Kang Wei’s business practices repeatedly drew regulatory punishment. China’s securities regulator fined him twice—once in 2018 and again in 2025—for a combined total of 2.9 million yuan (over ₹4.07 crore). Regulators accused him of using multiple investment vehicles to secretly acquire control of companies without mandatory disclosures, with the 2018 penalty directly tied to his work at Hexi Capital. Earlier this year, Chinese financial outlet Caixin reported that Kang was detained over suspected stock market manipulation.
Questions also surround the timeline of Alice’s departure from Hexi Capital. While a company representative claimed she left in 2017, an investor who met her confirmed she was still handing out Hexi Capital business cards as recently as last year.
Pivoting to AI Data Centres in Singapore
As U.S. export controls barred Nvidia from selling its most advanced AI chips directly to China, a lucrative workaround emerged: Chinese firms renting computing power from data centres in Southeast Asia.
Seizing this opportunity in 2023, Alice and her associates acquired Megaspeed, a Singapore-based subsidiary of a Chinese gaming company, pivoting its focus toward AI data centres. Around this time, she began going by “Alice Wong”—swapping the Mandarin spelling of her surname for its Cantonese equivalent, a move acquaintances suspected was aimed at masking her mainland Chinese roots. Her sister, Huang Yu, also appeared as a director and investor in firms tied to Alice and Kang.
Despite Kang’s regulatory troubles, Alice continued partnering with him. At a private club in Shanghai, the pair pitched Chinese investors to fund Southeast Asian AI data centres—without disclosing their romantic relationship. By early 2025, they were touting their ability to secure coveted Nvidia GPUs alongside deep ties to Chinese tech giant Alibaba, which had extended a loan to Megaspeed through a Singapore entity in 2024. Notably, Alice had attended one of Megaspeed’s earliest meetings with Nvidia in 2023 (where Jensen Huang was absent), maintaining a quiet, unassuming presence while highlighting Megaspeed’s contracts with Alibaba.
Espionage Allegations and Sudden Disappearance
Scrutiny intensified following U.S. intelligence suspicions that Alice may have acted as an asset for China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). Intriguingly, a source familiar with Megaspeed told the Financial Times that the MSS itself had reached out earlier this year to inquire about Alice’s business dealings after Singapore launched a probe into Megaspeed over suspected chip smuggling to China in October 2025.
While China’s foreign ministry has dismissed the espionage claims as baseless “smear and defamation,” Alice Huang has vanished from public view since Singapore announced its investigation, with insiders believing she has returned to China.
