0:00 In Singapore, the boss of the most valuable company on Earth is having dinner with a Chinese spy. He's Jensen Huang, who runs Nvidia. She's Alice Huang, no relation, and she runs one of his biggest customers. But here's the strange part. Somewhere nearby, American agents are taking pictures. They know exactly who she is. Jensen has no idea. To our customers! To friends. Under that table, her company is buying billions of dollars of his chips. The kind China isn't allowed to have. This is the story of how China got a spy into that seat, and who was watching. It starts with a phone call from Washington. But to see why that call mattered, you need to know who picked it up.
0:47 Because the man in the leather jacket didn't start at the top. He started in a bathroom in Kentucky. Jensen's story begins in Taiwan. At nine, he and his older brother were put on a plane to relatives in America. To pay for a good school, his parents sold almost everything they owned. Oneida Baptist Institute. A boarding school in Kentucky. Very strict. Strict is good. It wasn't a fancy boarding school. It was a reform school for troubled kids, and the relatives had signed them up by mistake. His brother was sent to work the school's tobacco fields. Jensen got the bathrooms. A hundred teenage boys' worth, every single day. I just wished they would be a bit more careful. His roommate was seventeen, covered in tattoos and knife scars, and taped up from his latest fight.
1:34 He was the toughest kid in the school. And he couldn't read. What's this say? I can teach you. Then I teach you the bench press. Deal. Decades later, Jensen gave that school two million dollars for a new building. It's called Huang Hall. The boy who cleaned its bathrooms put his name on the front door. At fifteen, he took the graveyard shift at Denny's. Dishes first. And then? Then busboy. Then, if you're lucky, waiter. And then? Then more dishes. And in nineteen ninety-three, he went back to Denny's. Not to work. To start a company. In a corner booth in East San Jose, Jensen and two engineer friends, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, sketched a chip for three-D graphics. He liked the place because it was quieter than home, and the coffee was cheap.
2:22 Anything else, boys? A graphics chip. We have pancakes. Then three more coffees. Each founder put in two hundred dollars. Six hundred dollars, about the price of a used couch, to take on the biggest chip companies in the world. It nearly died. When its make-or-break chip finally shipped in nineteen ninety-seven, Nvidia had about one month of payroll left. The company's unofficial motto became Our company is thirty days from going out of business. So how long have we got? Thirty days. And if the new chip doesn't sell? Twenty-nine. It sold, about a million of them in four months. And here's the trick that later made it a giant. A normal computer chip is one brilliant chef cooking a whole wedding dinner,
3:07 one plate at a time. Nvidia's chip is ten thousand line cooks, each flipping one pancake at the very same moment. For video games, that meant explosions. Then researchers noticed that artificial intelligence needs exactly that: millions of tiny sums, all at once. ChatGPT was trained on a supercomputer built from tens of thousands of Nvidia chips. And suddenly every AI company on Earth was standing in the same line. One of everything, please. Take a number. Forty thousand? That's your place in line. By twenty twenty-five, about eighty-six of every hundred dollars spent on AI chips went to Nvidia. In twenty twenty-three, Denny's put a plaque on the booth. It calls it "the booth that launched a
3:54 one-trillion-dollar company." At the party, the boss of that company put on an apron, balanced ten plates up his arm, and served the tables. Still remember how? Dishes first. Two years later, Nvidia became the first company ever worth five trillion dollars. Every dollar the three of them put into that booth had become about eight billion. The kid who scrubbed the toilets in Kentucky now holds the key to artificial intelligence. And when he talks about who should be allowed to buy his chips, Washington listens. Every AI lab on Earth needs this man. Then so do we. That made him the one man China needed most. October, twenty twenty-two. Washington calls Nvidia. Your best AI chips can't be sold to China anymore.
4:40 And the slower ones we made just for China? Those too. China. Seventeen billion dollars a year. Thirteen percent of everything we sell. Was. How many chips do we need? For a real AI? Tens of thousands. And one costs? About thirty thousand dollars. A new car, per chip. And how many can we buy? Zero. By Jensen's own account, Nvidia's share of China's market went from ninety-five percent to zero. And he told Washington so, every chance he got. They're nanoseconds behind us. We've got to go compete. So China couldn't buy the chips. But it could get close to the man who makes them, and who argues with Washington about who gets to buy them. That's a job for China's Ministry of State Security, the MSS.
5:27 Picture the FBI and the CIA in one building. It doesn't crack the safe. It befriends the man with the key. Nobody outside Beijing has said when Alice Huang was recruited. But an American memo later wrote down her job. This man makes the chips. And Washington listens to him. So what do I steal? Nothing. You learn what he knows. You help him see things our way. Why would he even talk to me? Because you'll be his customer. And then? We make friends. The key belonged to one man. And that man likes everybody. In twenty twenty-three, a Chinese gaming and cloud company called Seven Road split off its business outside China, moved it to Singapore, and renamed it Megaspeed.
6:13 The managing director was Alice Huang. We make phone games. Now we make supercomputers. Since when? Since Singapore. Address? Singapore. America trusts Singapore. Business? Cloud computing. A cloud company needs mountains of chips, and nobody asks why. And the chips go where? Data centers in Malaysia and Indonesia. Not one chip goes to China. Then how does China use them? It rents them. Imagine a country that isn't allowed to buy cars. So you buy the cars, park them just over the border, and rent out the keys by the hour. Chinese companies, Alibaba among them, rented time on the chips the same way, and the chips never entered China.
6:58 Can we buy your chips? No. But you can rent them. By the hour? By the warehouse. At the end of twenty twenty-three, everything Megaspeed owned came to about thirty-three million dollars. A nice little company, and not one the boss of Nvidia had any reason to meet. So she went and found him. Jensen Huang isn't hard to meet. The former Denny's dishwasher now runs a company worth about four and a half trillion dollars, and he still treats every customer like a regular. As his spokesman later put it: Meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year. She was about to become one of those thousands. June, twenty twenty-four, in Taipei. The big chip show, Computex, has just ended,
7:46 and Jensen goes for whiskey with people from the AI world. Someone takes photos. In them, right beside him, is Alice Huang. Who haven't I met? Alice. Megaspeed. Singapore. Singapore! What are you building? A cloud company. Something big. Then welcome to the table! Nobody looks at those photos twice. Later, someone will. That same month, at Megaspeed's Malaysian arm, the paperwork starts. What do we put up as collateral? Everything. The whole Malaysian business? The whole business, every last desk. And the lender is? Owned by Alibaba. And the buying began. A Singapore company wants servers! How many? Yes. Shipment one hundred. Shipment one hundred and fifty.
8:31 Shipment two hundred. What's in them? Nvidia's best. Nearly two billion dollars' worth. At thirty thousand dollars a chip? That's about sixty thousand chips. A parking lot of sixty thousand new cars. In one year. End of twenty twenty-three, we had thirty-three million dollars. Yes. End of twenty twenty-four, we have three billion. Yes. Two point nine billion of it is deposits. From who? Refundable. From... Refundable. About ninety times bigger in one year. If a lemonade stand went from thirty-three dollars to three thousand in a year, its parents would have questions. Then, late in twenty twenty-four, an official from America's Commerce Department walks into one of the Malaysian data centers. It's supposed to be full of humming AI servers.
9:19 Where's the data center? You're standing in it. These are boxes. Very advanced boxes. I'm opening an investigation. The inspector wrote it all down. And nothing happened. Because on paper, nothing looked wrong. Every sale went to Singapore or Malaysia, not China. When Nvidia sent people to check her sites, every chip was exactly where it should be. Jensen later said they had "counted every one." That was the whole trick: the chips stayed put, and China rented them over the internet. What almost nobody knew was that American spies were already listening to her. When American spy agencies listen to a foreign target, and that target talks to an American, the reports hide the American's name. They just say "an American citizen."
10:05 She's talking to an American citizen. Then request the name. It's Jensen Huang. Does he know who she is? Our read? No. How far back does it go? June, twenty twenty-four. A whiskey bar in Taipei. Then we watch. So where did all those servers come from? Mostly from Aivres, the American arm of Inspur, a Chinese server giant partly owned by the Chinese state, and on America's blacklist. Inspur? You're on the list. I'm Aivres. The American son. Aivres... Not on here. Thanks. December twenty twenty-four to January twenty twenty-six: four point six billion dollars of equipment in. And from Aivres? Four billion.
10:50 Malaysia was the older cousin who buys beer for kids who are too young. Except this cousin never hands the beer over. He lets you drink it at his place. Trade records later counted at least four point eight billion dollars of AI gear with Nvidia inside, all going to her company's Malaysian sister firm. Nearly five billion dollars, to one company most people had never heard of. Real smugglers hid Nvidia chips next to live lobsters. America's big smuggling bust in December twenty twenty-five was worth a hundred and sixty million dollars, about three percent of Megaspeed's haul. Megaspeed didn't need lobsters. It had invoices. Cost? Some dinners. Some whiskey. Return? Four point eight billion dollars of AI gear our companies can use.
11:37 And a seat next to the man who argues with Washington. Did he ever slip you anything under the table? Not once. Why pass chips under the table when you can rent the whole warehouse? We make friends. So what was all of this really for? The seat mattered more than the chips. Not for blueprints: Nvidia says customers get "zero information relevant to national security." The prize was the man, because Washington couldn't make up its mind about what China could buy. Your China chip? Blocked. So we can't sell it? You can. We take fifteen percent. So we can sell it? And the stronger one too. We take twenty-five percent. I'm going to need a bigger whiteboard.
12:22 Blocked. Then fifteen percent. Then twenty-five. Washington changes its mind every few months. And who does Washington keep hearing from? Him. That first call alone cost Nvidia four and a half billion dollars, in chips it suddenly couldn't sell. That's about thirteen dollars from every person in America, gone in one phone call. And through every one of those calls, Jensen made the same argument he'd been making for years, out loud, on every stage he could find: let American chips compete, everywhere. So you want to sell to China? I want the whole world building on American chips. Hold that thought. In Taipei, in May twenty twenty-five, he put it bluntly. All in all, the export control was a failure. A week later, to his investors:
13:08 The fifty billion dollar China market is effectively closed to U.S. industry. Fifty billion dollars. That's about a hundred and fifty dollars for every American, left on the table. That autumn in London, he warned that China was going to win the AI race, with cheaper power and fewer rules. That same night, he made sure nobody missed whose side he was on. It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide. That's Jensen in one line. He wants America to win, and he wants to sell the whole world the tools to build on it. Now look at it from Beijing. One chip is worth about thirty thousand dollars. One conversation between this man and the White House can open a fifty-billion-dollar market, or close it. Which one would you rather have a seat next to?
13:55 What is he telling Washington? Let American chips compete. Everywhere. He says that on every stage in the world. Why do we need you? Because I hear it first. And I see who he says it to. That's the job the memo would later describe: learn what he knows, and sit beside the man Washington listens to. And Washington kept moving. In December twenty twenty-five, Washington let approved Chinese buyers have the stronger chip. That same week, prosecutors announced that big smuggling bust, the one Megaspeed made look small. You're under arrest for sending these to China. Approved. What did you just approve? Sending these to China. Even the approved buyers weren't always what they seemed. New Matrix, Beijing. Approved. Hello? Anyone? The New York Times found that New Matrix,
14:42 a seventeen-month-old firm Washington had cleared to handle those chips, had an office that was "a hollow gray shell with wires dangling from the ceiling." On paper, it was approved. On paper, Megaspeed looked fine too. Back in the middle of twenty twenty-five, Megaspeed had gone quiet. It stopped buying and walked away from an order worth three point two billion dollars. In October twenty twenty-five, Senator Tom Cotton asked Commerce to investigate Megaspeed. He called the company it came from A Chinese government-owned cloud company. The New York Times found the two billion dollars of chips. Nvidia said Megaspeed had "no China shareholders." In February twenty twenty-six, her data-center landlord, a business of Bain Capital,
15:28 gave all the power it had set aside for Megaspeed to someone else. And the Commerce case moved to the Justice Department. By then, the people listening to her phone had a lot more than boxes. They had watched her for about a year. They photographed the dinners in Singapore. In May twenty twenty-five, there's even video of the two of them leaving a dinner with AI suppliers in Taipei, Alice a few feet behind him. In the spring of twenty twenty-six, America wrote it down, in a memo overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Recruited by China's Ministry of State Security. To gather information on Jensen Huang. And to shape his lobbying for chip sales to China. Who else sees this? Just this table. The memo went round that small group before
16:14 President Trump's trip to Beijing in May. According to The New York Times, the President had been briefed, and didn't act. Jensen had been left off the list for that plane. Then Trump called him, and Jensen flew to Alaska to climb aboard Air Force One on the way. On the twenty-ninth of October, twenty twenty-six, The New York Times broke the story: Alice Huang had been passing information to Beijing, and American intelligence knew it. Nvidia's stock fell about three percent. Jensen told Bloomberg her contacts were about Megaspeed. It was all completely normal and not unusual. He said she no longer worked there. Beijing answered too. Nothing more than an attempt to smear China. Three congressmen asked Jensen in for a closed-door briefing on the eighteenth of
17:00 November. Their letter warned of Significant national security concerns. On the sixth of November, the memo itself leaked. The spy memo's out! I know. How bad is it? We're up two point seven eight percent. Up? Today's news will not slow NVIDIA. But here's the part that still has no answer. Why did nobody tell Jensen? When the government finds a spy close to an American, there's a way to tell them. It's called a defensive briefing. In twenty fifteen, the FBI gave one to a congressman in California. Your fundraiser works for Chinese intelligence. Then she's gone. He cut her off. Jensen Huang never got that visit. The people who knew unmasked his name, photographed his dinners, wrote the memo and briefed the President.
17:46 Nobody told the man at the table. He had no idea. And the memo says the friendship became more than a friendship. He was the target, and she got closer than anyone was ever meant to. On the eighth of November, Jensen wrote to his staff. I owe my family and all of you an apology. I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry. Nvidia's board set up a committee of independent directors with outside lawyers. So far, it sees No reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised. Jensen is still CEO. And here's where his story reaches your wallet. Nvidia is now about eight dollars of every hundred in an S&P five hundred index
18:31 fund. If you have a retirement account, there's a good chance you own a slice of him. Wait. I own Nvidia? Everybody owns Nvidia. And one scary headline from China can move it hard. In January twenty twenty-five, a Chinese AI lab called DeepSeek shocked Wall Street. A Chinese lab built a cheap AI! We just lost five hundred and eighty-nine billion dollars. How much is that? About seventeen hundred dollars for every person in America. It was the biggest one-day loss in market history. Nvidia reports its earnings on the seventeenth of November. The congressmen get their briefing the next day. And two weeks later, Jensen walks onto a stage in Washington, the same city as the people who never told him. And Alice Huang? She's gone from Megaspeed.
19:17 Her name has been taken off its company papers. Nobody has said where she is. Go back to that dinner in Singapore. The candles, the toast to friends. The chair next to Jensen is empty now. We make friends. America watched her at his table for almost two years, and never told him. So who's pulling up a chair next to the people who build America's AI tonight? Jensen ended his letter like this. I love our country and our company. I am proud and grateful to be an American.
