How Shanghai fund manager Kang Wei introduced his wife Alice Huang to Jensen and built $7.5 billion Nvidia AI GPU smuggling operation

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Jensen Huang had a stunning fall from grace — from being one of the richest people on Earth and one of the primary drivers of the AI boom to being implicated in two extramarital affair scandals and resigning from Nvidia in under two weeks. While many are focused on the former Nvidia chief’s relationship with Alice Huang, who was allegedly passing on information to Chinese intelligence, the Wall Street Journal dug deeper into the person who introduced her to Jensen — Kang Wei, a star fund manager in Shanghai who also happened to be Ms. Huang’s husband.

There have been reports that Kang Wei met Jensen Huang in the 2010s, when his investment firm was heavily involved in Chinese gaming companies. It’s not clear if this introduction predated Kang’s relationship and marriage to Alice, but sources close to Ms. Huang said that she was able to get close to Jensen by the 2020s. Despite being a couple, the WSJ reported that Kang seemingly accepted Alice’s relationship with Jensen, with people close to the couple saying that he would often joke that she was a personal assistant to the billionaire.

It was also around this time that Alice Huang, whose Chinese name is Huang Le, entered the financial industry, first working at HSBC’s private banking arm in Hong Kong, before moving to CITIC Securities, where she attained a vice president position. It was during her time at CITIC that Alice crossed paths with Kang. Shanghai Hexi signed a deal with the securities firm in 2014 and 2015, and by 2016, corporate registry records show that Ms. Huang had joined the investment firm.

The Economic Times reports Alice Huang’s move into Shanghai Hexi resulted in her getting a 25% stake in the company, all of which came from Kang. The remaining shares were shared between Kang Wei, with 48.75%, and his business partner, Zhu Xiaoming, with 26.25%, with Alice Huang’s 25% ownership stake being held through Shanghai Yuxi Investment Management Consulting Co., Ltd. Meanwhile, Kang also started introducing Alice Huang as his wife to his business associates and investors.

Two years after the transaction, in 2019, Hangzhou Shengfeng’s ownership was transferred to an offshore entity, which was eventually consolidated under Osmanthus Vale Holdings — a holding company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and listed Huang Le, Alice Huang’s Chinese name, as its sole owner. It was then purchased by 7Road Holdings less than two months after it was founded. While Ms. Huang was the signatory in this deal, it’s believed that she served as a “white glove,” a person who operates on behalf of another to conceal their identity — but it remains unclear if this was for Shanghai Hexi and Kang Wei or some other third party.

There is not much information on Alice Huang’s activities between 2019 and 2021. However, Shanghai Hexi invested in Shanghai Longjing Information Technology, a data center-focused subsidiary of Century Huatong in 2020, where Ms. Huang served as a director between 2021 and 2022, according to a report by The Wire China. At about the same time, 7Road Holdings expanded into cloud computing, just before ChatGPT brought AI LLMs to the forefront. The U.S. government’s ban on the export of Nvidia chips to China put this investment in jeopardy, though, forcing it to spin off the business as 7Road International in Singapore.

We don’t know when 7Road Holdings sold its Singapore subsidiary, but corporate records show that by the time the company was renamed Megaspeed in March 2023, it was already under the ownership of Huang Le Limited and led by Ms. Huang. It was sold again in November 2023 to Swiftdata, a company owned by Singaporean Tan Yong Pong. Axios said that she left the firm as a managing director soon after this acquisition, but sources said that she kept working with the company afterward, with Kang Wei helping her get it off the ground.

In the same year, Shanghai Century Litong was founded to build AI data centers in Shanghai and Shenzhen, with Jiangsu Lettall Electronic Co., an electronic components manufacturer, holding a 90% stake, while the remaining 10% is owned by Century Longteng, as reported by BigGo Finance. It should be noted that Century Longteng was renamed from Shanghai Yuxi Investment Management, with the firm pivoting its business from finance to cloud computing, and that even though Alice Huang has already exited the company by this time, it’s under the control of Huang Yu, who some sources say is Ms. Huang’s sister.

A year after these data center acquisitions, Alice Huang began to be spotted in public with the former Nvidia CEO. A LinkedIn post showed her having drinks with a leather-clad Jensen Huang alongside other tech executives from NetThunder and Gigabyte at a post-Computex 2024 event. She was once again seen having dinner with him in a Taipei restaurant as reporters tried to interview him while one kid demanded his attention off camera.

But more than these public sightings, Alice herself boasted about her “closeness” to the then CEO. People close to her said that she regularly posted photos with Jensen on her WeChat account, and even shared others with potential customers to help establish her credibility. She even reportedly claimed that Mr. Huang would celebrate her birthdays with restaurant dinners and gifts, with one Nvidia China sales employee also saying that she was a familiar face at the company’s annual event for China partners.

An investigation revealed that from 2023 to 2025, Megaspeed imported $4.6 billion worth of Nvidia AI chips, while another $2 billion was routed through Speedmatrix, Megaspeed’s subsidiary with offices in Johor, Malaysia. Shanghai Century Litong also reportedly bought AI GPUs from other sources, with estimates putting the total number of banned chips moved through Alice Huang’s assistance at around 240,000, putting the shipments’ worth at around $7.5 billion.

But even as Ms. Huang was making her international moves, Kang Wei was facing trouble at home. Chinese regulators fined him 2.5 million yuan, or approximately $380,000, in 2025, for violating sections of China’s Securities Law. This also led to a warning letter against him, issued in August 2026 by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Despite running into trouble with the authorities, this massive paper trail showed how Kang Wei actively made moves that put Alice Huang close to Jensen Huang.

Some questions remain, though, about the U.S. intelligence community’s claims that she worked with the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China’s primary intelligence and counterintelligence agency. If it’s true that Alice Huang worked with the MSS and passed on information to the agency, did she specifically target Jensen Huang, or did the spy agency simply discover their indiscretion and use that to force her to cooperate? Was all this planned by the MSS, or were they just shrewd business moves that allowed Kang to make more money while going under the radar of regulators? These are questions that only Kang Wei and Alice Huang (or the Chinese spy agency) can answer. But no matter the case, the fact remains that China acquired advanced AI chips that were supposed to be out of its reach because of this couple’s connections.

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

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