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A major scandal involving Nvidia founder Jen-Hsun Huang and a suspected Singapore-based Chinese spy has cast a spotlight on the city-state's success as a global chip hub and as a location for alleged illegal trade.
Last Thursday, Huang resigned from the U.S. chip giant after admitting to an affair.
He was reportedly having an affair with a woman named Alice Huang, who ran Singapore data center company Megaspeed, a large buyer of Huida chips.
In fact, for decades, Singapore has carefully cultivated its image as an open, business-friendly economy, allowing companies to easily enter the US and Chinese markets.
With the AI craze, it has become an important hub for high-end semiconductor chip trade in recent years. Last year, Singapore was Huida's second-largest settlement center globally, accounting for nearly a fifth of the U.S. chip giant's revenue.
Notably, less than 1% of that revenue is actually chips entering Singapore, as the island nation serves primarily as a transit point for many Asian companies to place orders and ship products elsewhere.
Since the United States restricted advanced U.S. semiconductors from being exported to China or acquired by Chinese companies in 2022, U.S. officials have been worried that other countries such as Singapore may be used by Chinese companies to obtain these chips.
Megaspeed is a classic example. It became the largest buyer of Huida chips in Southeast Asia and was suspected of providing backdoor access to those chips to Chinese companies through data centers in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
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Although Singapore does not prohibit the transfer of advanced artificial intelligence chips to overseas companies, such activities may violate U.S. export controls.
Singapore said that while it does not enforce "export controls unilaterally imposed by other countries", it expects all its companies to comply with the relevant requirements. There have been some gains in law enforcement in this country. It has indicted four companies and five individuals, including Chinese nationals, on charges including fraud over concerns that Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek had purchased Huida chips from third parties in Singapore and other places.
They also tried to investigate Megaspeed, but encountered many difficulties.
The Singapore government issued a statement on Thursday stating that since February 2025, they have been investigating whether Megaspeed and other companies made false declarations regarding data servers purchased and exported through Singapore.
The companies claim the equipment will eventually be shipped to neighboring Malaysia, but Singaporean authorities suspect the final destination is elsewhere.
Singapore also said it had repeatedly sought assistance from U.S. authorities to obtain more information from one of the companies under investigation, the U.S. company Supermicro (which the BBC understands supplies computer servers to Megaspeed). But "despite repeated requests, Singapore has so far received only limited information or assistance."
Accordingly, the BBC has sought comment from the US State Department.
Singaporean authorities said they were also investigating Huang - not for espionage but for his possible role in Megaspeed's alleged fraud. Eventually, they found "insufficient evidence" and let her leave Singapore in February this year, having previously withheld her passport for several months.
Since the investigation began nearly two years ago, Singapore has not brought any charges against Megaspeed or any company or individual related to the case. Investigations into Megaspeed in Singapore and the United States are still ongoing.
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According to the New York Times, in 2024, U.S. officials went to a data center owned by Megaspeed in Malaysia and saw Huida’s technology products still intact in boxes, raising concerns that Megaspeed shipped high-end chips to other places.
Bloomberg reported that last year, Megaspeed seemed to have imported 50,000 more chips than Huida could explain. Huida later adjusted its numbers after visiting more warehouses.
Megaspeed maintains that it has always acted in compliance with the law and that previous inspections by authorities had found no evidence of illegal activity. On Thursday, the company said it "welcomes appropriate government review" and is "committed to working constructively and transparently with the U.S. government." China has also long disputed accusations that its companies and institutions illegally obtained high-end U.S. chips.
But how Megaspeed and Huang came to Singapore also highlights other vulnerabilities that come with the country's openness. Because, in recent years, the city-state has become a top destination for Chinese companies, with technology companies such as TikTok and Manus setting up their global headquarters here.
In addition to Singapore's ease of doing business, its population is dominated by Chinese, and most Singaporean citizens have a positive view of China. Winston Ma, an adjunct professor at the New York University (NYU) School of Law, said that for Chinese companies, Singapore provides a base close to mainland China and a "neutral address" that is acceptable to global customers and investors.
But critics say this has given rise to the phenomenon of "Singapore-washing," in which Chinese companies use Singapore's clean image to disguise their origins, reduce suspicion, and even cover up suspicious activities. For example, the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a Washington-based security analysis organization, emphasized to the BBC that they assessed Huang Le's establishment of Megaspeed as such a case.
The BBC checked corporate records in China, Hong Kong and Singapore and found that in 2019 Huang Le sold a gaming company and its subsidiaries to Chinese gaming company 7Road.
In March 2023, a subsidiary of 7Road in Singapore appointed Huang Le as executive director. The next day, the company changed its name to Megaspeed. After Huang Le took charge for eight months, he transferred the company to a Singaporean man.
C4ADS said that during this period, Megaspeed went through "a critical period of corporate restructuring and regional expansion" and that her corporate relationships raised questions about whether "Megaspeed's Singaporean identity is real or is actually controlled by China."
Because, even after Huang Le transferred Megaspeed, C4ADS assessed that she still "substantially controlled" the company, based on her connection with Megaspeed through another company and LinkedIn posts showing that she continued to call herself Megaspeed's "chairman" in meetings.
In response, Megaspeed did not respond to the BBC's inquiries about the company's contacts with Huang Le and the Chinese government. This all reinforces the dilemma facing Singapore. Dylan Loh, associate professor of politics and international studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said: "For a long time, Singapore has been able to enjoy good relations with both the United States and China, and it has benefited from both sides!"
In fact, Singapore has long positioned itself as a neutral party between the two superpowers. Its Prime Minister Lawrence Wong insists that his country is neither pro-China nor pro-US, but "pro-Singapore".
But Luo Minghui said that with the dispute between the United States and China over the chip issue, this balance "has now quickly become very difficult to manage and sometimes quite tense."
Analysts say that as the Megaspeed case develops, the tightrope under Singapore's feet is bound to become thinner. Chong Ja Ian, associate professor at the National University of Singapore and Carnegie China non-resident scholar, told the BBC that Beijing may ask why Singapore is investigating issues related to US restrictions and whether they side with US interests.
Washington may interpret Singapore's latest statement as "putting the blame on the United States," which could lead to a backlash from the White House, he said.
Chong Jiaying added: "Singapore has formulated a policy stance not to choose sides. But if they don't choose sides, they run the risk of being seen as complicit in any party's agenda."
But Benjamin Ho, an assistant professor at Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies and an expert on China, pointed out that this "is not the first or last time that Singapore has been caught between the United States and China."
"This is the price that open economies have to face - when things go bad, you are caught in the middle," He told the BBC.
BBC Global China Unit reporter Liu Ruizheng also contributed to this article.
This article was originally written in English. We used artificial intelligence to assist in translation and was reviewed by BBC journalists before publication. Learn more about how we use artificial intelligence.
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