Megaspeed Hires U.S. Firm as Probe Deepens

Megaspeed, the Singapore-based tech company under U.S. criminal investigation over alleged chip smuggling into China, said in a November 12 statement reported by NBC News that it has hired a U.S. law firm to conduct a “comprehensive census” of its graphics processing units and will cooperate fully with American authorities.

That is the news. The useful part is not the corporate throat-clearing about transparency, which companies deploy the way some people reach for breath mints. It is the decision to inventory GPUs independently. If U.S. investigators suspect export-control evasion, a verified count of what chips a company has, where they are and how they moved matters more than any polished sentence about compliance culture.

Megaspeed said it has already cooperated with inspections by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security and stands ready to work with “any other relevant U.S. government authority.” The statement was signed by Chairman and Chief Executive Tan Yong Pong, who also goes by James Tan.

The company did not address the espionage allegations surrounding Alice Huang, a senior Megaspeed executive whom NBC said U.S. intelligence agencies determined was a Chinese intelligence operative and who allegedly had an affair with Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang. China has denied the broader spying claims. Its Foreign Ministry said the U.S. should stop using what it called espionage narratives as cover for technology blockades.

That omission is telling, but not mysterious. Megaspeed’s immediate legal danger appears to be export controls, not public relations. NBC reported that the company is under U.S. criminal investigation for allegedly moving American-made chips into China in defiance of those controls. A census of GPUs goes to the heart of that question: what was bought, what remained in permitted markets and what did not.

The statement also lands at an awkward moment for Nvidia, one of the world’s largest chip companies and a major supplier to Megaspeed. NBC reported that Nvidia’s board was meeting to decide Jensen Huang’s future as chief executive amid the widening scandal. For Megaspeed, that is background, not the balance sheet risk. The real pressure is whether U.S. authorities conclude the company was a compliant customer caught in someone else’s mess or a channel through which restricted chips kept travelling.

Megaspeed has now chosen the expensive answer: count everything, lawyer up and invite scrutiny before the government does the counting for you.