Singapore Unfiltered: What role does Singapore firm Megaspeed play in the Jenson Huang scandal?

Best of, let's talk Singapore. No filters, no holding back. Singapore unfiltered, with Singapore speaks its mind. Only on MoneyFM 89.3. ♪ It's too late to apologize ♪ ♪ It's too late to apologize ♪ ♪ I said it's too late to apologize ♪ ♪ It's too late to apologize ♪ ♪ It's too late to apologize ♪ Yes, welcome to a very special Singapore unfiltered. Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang is facing an independent corporate board probe, a proposed shareholder class action lawsuit and federal scrutiny following revelations of an alleged, actually it's not alleged, she's admitted it, extra marital affair allegedly with Alice Huang, a businesswoman who US intelligence officials have identified as an alleged, lots of alleged cheer. Good. Chinese intelligence asset, but she did work in Singapore. She was a top executive at mega speed international, a Singapore based data center company and major buyer of Nvidia AI chips. And there's only one man who can sort of tackle, break down all of this. And that's the man himself, Steve Okan, my old buddy, Steve Okan is joining us in the studio this morning, the founder and CEO of APAC Advisors. Good morning, Steve. Good morning, great to be with you, Audrey. Really, really looking forward to it. Oh, thank you. I hope that I get to ask some questions today. Okay, you could go first. All right, I'll start first, Steve. Thank you so much for joining us on Let's Talk Singapore. Now we know lots of investigations are now ongoing. Nvidia's board has now launched an independent investigation into whether Jensen was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. But here's why this story matters to us in Singapore. Megaspeed has been operating here, and the company has come under scrutiny over suspicions that it helped Chinese firms get access to advanced Nvidia chips restricted under US export controls. Singapore police say investigations into Megaspeed are ongoing, and I believe it's been going on for quite some time. So Steve, let's start with how much of the story is about a personal scandal. A lot of us are focused on the fact that he had an extramarital affair. But how much is it about a much bigger geopolitical and business issue? No, I do that. That's exactly right. I mean, look, the affair makes this so global in terms of everybody can understand it, and it makes it extremely human. But it's the geopolitical that is really going to be the one to watch. And it is certainly going to be incredibly important for Singapore as to what comes out of this. The issue is not did the CEO of Nvidia have an affair. It was Singapore used as a transshipment point legally, possibly, legally for these Nvidia chips to help China advance on the AI. And the Congress is much more likely or now. I'm not saying likely, but much more likely or now to change the laws that are going to have an impact on businesses here in Singapore and across Southeast Asia. So the real business impact, the geopolitical impact, is not the affair, but of course the affair is what is driving the intense interest right now. Steve, let's focus on the Singapore connection for a moment. Megaspeed, the company that Alice Swan was CEO. What is Megaspeed? What did it do and what's its connection to Nvidia? - Well, Megaspeed is a shell company. It didn't do anything other than to be a shell. That is not illegal. There are plenty of, so I'm not saying it's a shell company making a negative statement on it, but that's just all it is. It is a shell company. And it was created here in Singapore so that you could then have an entity to buy these Nvidia chips and then send them on to other places. Now the question is, what other places did they go besides Malaysia? And then what did Malaysia, when the chips were there, what were they used for? So that's the real question is what happened with this shell company? And is the US going to change the laws to not allow it to happen? And then also did this shell company do things it shouldn't have been doing? And that is going to have a huge impact on other businesses in Singapore who are going to have to be much stricter now on their compliance. - I just explained for our listeners' benefits, Steve, why this transition situation is potentially a legal problem. Just explain the rules regarding chip sales from the US to China and Singapore's alleged role in that. - Well, I mean, that's the crux of it. But the US government has borrowed Chinese companies from buying advanced chips because this gets into the competition for who is going to dominate or be the dominating country when it comes to AI. Is it going to be the United States or is it going to be China? And the United States has the advantage right now, not total advantage, of course, because China has advantages too. But the US advantage are these chips that power the frontier AI. And it is NVIDIA that of course is the number one company when it comes to this. And so the question is, did Chinese companies try to work around these restrictions through this shell company mega speed in Singapore? That is the issue that is at the heart of it. And it is something well before the affair was known, certainly at least publicly, well before the affair was known, the Commerce Department was investigating it. The Singapore government was investigating it at the request of the United States Senator. So this has been ongoing for some time. Of course, what explodes it is that we now have a potential honey pot and it's with a person who's extremely close to Donald Trump. Throw in the general, you can use a word skepticism. I might go first or in the general skepticism towards tech oligarchs, the free past they've been getting, the tens of millions of dollars that they've been donating to Trump to dry and get him to change path. So all of this comes together. It doesn't all come together here in Singapore, but this story brings a real Singapore focus to it. - All right, Steve, mega speed. Now we know it's a major NVIDIA customer. It's believed to have been founded and led by Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang. Tell us what we know so far about Alice Huang. - Well, she started out on television in China and then she moved on into private equity and she was by all accounts a pretty successful investor with who may or may not have been her husband unclear. If she's married unclear, if she has a husband, but that seems to be the case. And then all of a sudden in 2023, she sets up this company in Singapore backed by wealthy investors in Shanghai. So there was a company in Singapore, she restructures it. And then that company is soon buying billions of dollars of NVIDIA AI chips. And so that's the question, did she sidestep and her and her investors of course, sidestep this prohibition by creating this for mega speed through a Singaporean shell company to then send these chips onward? And the question is did they go onward to China? So a lot of focus on what happened where mega speed was created, who was behind it? How is it possible that just four days after the ownership of a change to mega speed that NVIDIA became a cloud partner? So how did that happen? And because being a cloud partner of NVIDIA is worth a lot of money. - On that point, we have a very good question from Gary and you can give us the geopolitical context for this. Gary says our Singapore companies obligated to uphold the decisions of U.S. lawmakers. How is this an issue for Singapore as we are a separate sovereign state? - Well, it's the companies that are, if the company is buying chips from the United States, the company is going to agree to what the United States is gonna require on them. So is it Singapore as a government? Not necessarily, but it's the Singapore company that is violating the contract presumably between NVIDIA and the mega speeder, whoever it might be. So you have that violation and then what Singapore wants to do and what Singapore has said it will do is that it will respect the laws of other countries. And so that's where the issue is, if Singapore wants to be, or any company wants to be a center for these chips that are subject to U.S. export controls, then you're going to have to be expected to respect the U.S. law or else the U.S. isn't going to allow people to sell them here. - Yeah, well, Sultane has come in to say this is obviously a very tricky situation for Singapore. Ian, coming in with a great question, Ian asks, will Singapore become the collateral damage? Because mega speed is based here in Singapore. So I do wanna talk about Singapore making have very interesting distinction here. It says it's does not implement unilateral export controls imposed by foreign governments, including the US, but it also makes clear that companies operating here are expected to take other countries' regulations into account, like you said, Steve. But how does Singapore walk this fine line? We have very strong economic and technology links with both the US and China. So could a case like this really put pressure on Singapore to take a more explicit position? - Well, and will it put pressure on US companies as well to say we need to be sure that when we're exporting to Singapore, that the laws are going to be followed. And then the Singapore companies are going to have pressure to make sure that when they are exporting to Malaysia, in particular, in this case, that those servers are staying in Malaysia and being used for what they said, pressure is coming on everyone. And there is so much money at stake and because NVIDIA clearly fell down here and NVIDIA has admitted it fell down. NVIDIA is doing internal investigations. Bill Bishop is a very influential China hand in the United States. His recommendation to NVIDIA is that they need to stop halting all sales to Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, as well as distributors in the region while this investigation takes place. Now, I don't know if NVIDIA is going to follow Bill Bishop's recommendation. But NVIDIA was Singapore had $10 billion, I believe the last time, the last publicly available numbers. $10 billion, it was booked here from NVIDIA. So there is so much money at stake on this. - What a later story in the Straits Times, Steve, is NVIDIA is investigating if its chief executive officer, Jensen Huang, was the target of foreign spying. That's the lead story in the Straits Times today. So you mentioned the internal investigation. What happens next for NVIDIA? They are investigating their own founder about his alleged role in a foreign spying espionage ring. I mean, this is John LaCarae novel stuff. - Well, that's a problem for NVIDIA. And it's gonna go, first, NVIDIA clearly has a failure when it comes to its governance. And it has had a failure when that has been known for a long time because this company is so dominated by the founder, who happens to be the CEO. This company doesn't have a chairman. Just 1% of Russell 3000 companies don't have a chair. The largest company, and arguably, the most important company in the world when it comes to AI doesn't have a chair. None of the directors on the board, none of the board members are current or former CEOs. You want current or former CEOs on your board because they know what it's like. They can really have a peer-to-peer discussion with the CEO that clearly did not happen here. I mean, Microsoft and Metta each have four CEOs on their boards. There's no succession plan for NVIDIA. Literally, everyone who is important at all in the video reported directly to Huang. It was a very flat organization, which means no one can come in and replace them. So this is a really, really tough spot that NVIDIA is in. And the question is, can they survive with him as CEO when he is going to be so distracted? That I can't imagine he does not take a leap of absence. He should have taken a leap of absence as CEO when he admitted the affair a couple of days ago. If he is going to be doing nothing but answering hearings and testimony in everything, how can he run the company? And so the question, if you're an investor, you have to ask yourself, is the company bigger than Jensen Huang? And if it is, it'll be fine. But if it isn't, it is going to be in a lot of trouble. And I think that's what everybody's looking at right now. Well, Steve Jobs, they're the similar situation Apple didn't they? He was asked to step down. He did, but then he was invited back to Apple and Apple is subsequently proven that they are bigger than Steve Jobs. They're bigger than ever. Is that a similar analogy here? Should he be might to step down? >> Well, I think from a governance perspective, he has to at least take a leap of absence. How can he is the number one story in the world right now? He is the subject of multiple investigations. As you said, Neil, his own company is investigating him. There's probably going to be three congressional committees investigating. The Commerce Department is investigating him. The Singapore government is certainly investigating mega speed. They said they were doing that. How can you run a company while you are the center of all of this? And how does he have any credibility? He is a liar, right? He lied all the time about this affair. Now, you can say, well, you can say, well, those lies don't count, but I think when it comes to this geopolitical environment, hard to say they don't care. >> Yeah, but the thing is, you said so yourself. He is the public face of Nvidia. A lot of people will say he is Nvidia. So do you think that he's actually too big, too powerful to be punished for this? >> I mean, that's the question that investors are watching right now. And have to be asking yourselves, if Nvidia is the number one company in the world when it comes to powering AI and certainly frontier AI, the Jensenwan get it at a place where he's not needed anymore, where the company can still go forward without him. Because it is so good at what it does. It is so advanced, it had so much foresight that the company is now bigger than him. You could have argued three years ago, five years ago, whatever you wanted, that wasn't the case. The question is, is that the case now? And I mean, that's what you have to be thinking through from an investor standpoint. Is he bigger than the company or is now the company bigger than him? >> Yeah, well, if someone's on the camp of he is bigger than the company and they need him to be able to keep the stock prices up. How would Nvidia's board need to uncover before it even considers asking him to step aside? >> Well, that is a question. Can he? I mean, maybe he can, maybe he can, but you need an independent investigation. What did he do? Why did he do what he did? Did he put his own personal interest ahead of the company's interest? So you have to start thinking those questions. Then you have to start asking yourself, how much is he going to be a negative now that the Democrats have the control of the Congress and that the tech executives are going to be held into account Senator Chris Coons was a very powerful Democratic Senator from Delaware. He said we need answers about the relationship between AI billionaires and the Trump administration who's making these decisions, who's really got their hand on the wheel. We saw that the Commerce Department was investigating deep seek in Nvidia, according to reports in, I think it was the New York Times, reports in the Times that they got the Commerce Department to drop that investigation. Now if that is happening, then you have serious issues in terms of corruption that you have to look at. So this investigation is going to be looking at all these things, all of these multiple investigations, and how can Justin Huang, who's at the center of a lot of this, be capable of being CEO at this time? Speaking of integrity, as you mentioned earlier, Steve, Singapore accounted for 22% of Nvidia's total revenue at close to $10 billion. As you mentioned just now in 2025, this leads to Sultans point, is Singapore's business integrity at stake? >> Well, I think the compliance questions are going to be, is there enough that's being done and will more need to be done? Clearly, there's going to be more of a spotlight now, like it was, I don't remember the first time I read the phrase Singapore washing, this is not a new term, right? The phrase Singapore washing, and that is when you have in particular Chinese companies establish a legal entity in Singapore to be able to be no longer to be considered Chinese. Now maybe this is done because there is a negative connotation in certain markets with Chinese companies, and there isn't a negative connotation. And totally legitimate to say you're doing this for reputational reasons. But are you doing it for reputational reasons? Are you doing it because it's easier to be a global company in Singapore than it is to be in China also a totally legitimate reason to do it? Or are you doing it to evade the laws of the United States? Are you going to do this? Are you coming here to send goods from the U.S. on to China through third countries? That is a different issue. And there is going to be more of a spotlight on whether that is occurring and what needs to be done to put compliance into place so that doesn't happen. We have questions coming in, Steve. Lots of them. Keat says, what are the options for President Trump to resolve this issue and how these actions affect the USA and the rest of the world? Big question, Steve. Yeah, I'm going to change it from Trump to Congress because Congress is going to act before Trump does. And one of the things that we are going to be watching for sure and have been watching is the difference, so there's a competition between the U.S. and China on AI. And the U.S. wants to stay ahead on AI and that's not giving access to China of the most advanced chips. And so you do that by preventing them from having the chips themselves and that's calling that's called AI diversion. You want to make sure that the chips don't get diverted from the US to a third country to China. But then there's also the issue of AI diffusion. And diffusion is related to cloud services. And so can you have a data center that where you can then access China can access the cloud to that data center and get access to the chips that they're not allowed to physically have. And that is what seems to be going on right now in Southeast Asia. Legal, okay? So, so of Chinese companies such as Alibaba and bite dance are relying on remotely accessing the video chips in Southeast Asia to train their most advanced models. Are you going to change the law? And there's a law pending in Congress now. It's called the Remote Access Security Act. If that passes, that means there are going to be many fewer of these chips in Southeast Asia. So I think that's the thing to watch the most in terms of what could come next as a result of this. This is very controversial, which is why it hasn't passed yet. But this could be, you know, the issue that pushes it over the edge. Well, Steve, I want to bring it back to Singapore. And Sultana did write in to ask is Singapore's integrity at stake. I know we've talked about the companies and governments involved, but what about the people here? We know that Singapore has built its reputation as a trusted international business, tech and financial hub. We want global companies to come and invest here, establish operations and use Singapore as a base for the region. So could a case like this possibly damage confidence in Singapore as a trusted business hub, do you think? I mean, I don't think it will, but it's a great, it's a great question. And it's something that really needs to be focused on. And that, you know, that is, you know, what does brand Singapore stand for? What is brand Singapore stand for in this era of geopolitical tension? What's this? What is, you know, what is brand Singapore stand for? When it comes to Donald Trump, right? David Black and I wrote in the head on this, we're saying, you know, used to be that Singapore said, you know, we're in open markets, it's global trade and we want U.S. companies to come here set up so that they can then expand into and invest across Asia. Well, that's now what Donald Trump wants. You know, Donald Trump wants investment going from Asia into the U.S. And so Singapore is also now talking much more about that. So that's part of the brand Singapore debate. But absolutely, if Singapore's semiconductor business, you know, rests on being a trusted transparent location for global technology companies. And if mega speed is shown to be able to skirt around that, then how is Singapore going to respond? And so Singapore said it has investigations ongoing. It is, it is a great question. And this is something that will last that may not be in the headlines. Could not agree more, Steve. I have a question. Can I ask, how many years did you work for the U.S. government under the Clinton administration? Roughly? Five and a half, basically. So about five and a half, six years, and you've been involved with geopolitics for the best part of 20, 30 years, right? So my question to you is, are you surprised that in the year 2026, if it's alleged to be true, that Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort, are you still amazed that the honey pot scam still works in 2026? No. Do you have to listen to 2076? You've been asked my AI avatar in 2126 or whatever year it is. But it always works. But I think this one, again, we're all now, we're just purely speculating. But I think what happened here was this did not start as a honey pot. I do not believe because it's too hard to pull off. I take that she was a undercover asset of the Ministry of State Security in China and that this was all done with foresight to make that happen. I think that what happened was she wanted to get close to him to make money for her company and her investors. And then that happened. And so she clearly, he fell for that. At some point, and then the Chinese government says, oh, you have access to him. He is arguably the most influential person on AI tech policy in the United States. We're going to start talking to you. I think it went to me, that's the most obvious sense of what happened. So it wasn't a honey pot for espionage. My guess, total guess. It didn't start as a honey pot for espionage. It started as a honey pot so that she could make money and make money for her and her investors. And the Chinese government is able to say, oh, by the way, you know what, you're going to start talking to us now. Well, I know that we have thrown the word alleged around already this morning. But you know, whether Nvidia boss, Jensen Huang, fell into a trap set by China's intelligence services when he indulged in an affair does remain a matter of conjecture apart from Huang's emission of infidelity to his wife and letting down his family. Colleagues and shareholders, nothing is established fact. Do you want to just put that out there? This press release from Nvidia was brought to you by Audrey C. All right. Steve, before you go, I do have a big question on what the bigger lesson is for Singapore here. If there's one lesson Singapore should take away from this, what would it be? I mean, I think that your compliance has to go really ramped up by everyone and by the Singapore government in terms of its oversight of its companies, but more importantly by the companies themselves and that if you are a US company and you are, you know, got a business deal with a shell company in Singapore, you've got to do a lot of due diligence now. You just cannot trust that, oh, well, this company's here in Singapore and it's going to send it to Malaysia and all of our export control rules are going to be followed. I mean, that's just not what you can do. And look, violations of all of these, the export controls, I mean, this isn't of, you know, what we would call, you had to have knowledge that this was happening. You know, export control violations are strict liability. I mean, if it happens, you are guilty. And it would seem to be here that, in this case, that NVIDIA, his violate seems to be, I'll use your alleged right, it seems to be, by everything we're reading, and that we know there's multiple investigations as to whether export control violations have occurred. If not in Singapore, through Singapore, Singapore is a conduit and everybody is going to have to spend a lot more time if you are involved in AI and the semiconductor industry on this. It's just, it's geopolitically fraught, it's huge competition. And there's too much money that's state where people are willing, as Neil said, we're talking 10 billion dollars, right? And it came through Singapore from NVIDIA alone in need of, you've got to really focus on this now. Steve, I could not agree more. Steve Okin, who is not allegedly joining us, he is joining us and he's wearing his 89.3 shirt as well. Thank you so much, Steve Okin, the founder and CEO of APAC Advisors for joining us today. I did a lot of research. I had one, just there was one thing I read this morning that jumped out at me so much, the lead in the New York Times this morning, the very lead in the New York Times. In December 2023, Alice Huang met Jensen Huang and a small group of colleagues at an Italian restaurant in Singapore. What restaurant was it? I want to know what that restaurant was. Whatever it's called, Steve, Audrey has beaten it. I can count it. And I will guarantee, and I will guarantee Neil has not correct, correct. That's why Steve Okin is paid the big bucks. Thank you so much for joining us on Singapore unfiltered. So happy to be back with you, Neil. Great meeting you, Audrey, and see everybody on Saturday morning at 9.30 or 9.20 whenever it is I'm doing the international news review now. For more conversations and podcasts, visit moneyetham893.sg.