Manhattan Probe Examines Alice Huang’s Links to Supermicro Servers Equipped With Nvidia Chips
Key Facts
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan is examining whether entities linked to Alice Huang were involved in alleged efforts to smuggle Supermicro servers equipped with Nvidia units to China, according to a Fortune report on November 12. The probe opens a new line of scrutiny into the movement of AI hardware through entities and companies in the region, as the case intersects with U.S. export restrictions. The report did not say that formal charges had been brought against Huang, Nvidia or Supermicro. Nor did it establish that Supermicro was a partner in the transfers. The role of entities linked to Huang remains under investigation, with no judicial finding announced.
In Singapore, police and customs authorities opened a separate investigation in February 2025 that covered several companies and officials, including Megaspeed International and its controllers, over suspicions that false declarations may have been made when the servers were purchased. The Ministry of Home Affairs said the companies involved bought the physical servers and then exported them through Singapore to Malaysia without entering the Singapore market. Police examined whether the servers were later moved from Malaysia to another destination, contrary to what was stated in the declarations. The Singapore investigation therefore concerns the purchase, export route and related declarations. The Manhattan prosecutors’ probe, according to Fortune, concerns the possibility that entities linked to Huang took part in smuggling servers to China.
The ministry said police requested information from Supermicro as a U.S. server supplier, but received only limited cooperation from the company. At a meeting held on July 7, 2025, police and Singapore’s Attorney-General’s Chambers raised the issue with U.S. authorities, after which Singapore formally requested U.S. assistance in obtaining the company’s cooperation. Since September 2025, it has repeated its requests to the Justice Department and the FBI. The ministry said: "Despite these repeated requests, Singapore has so far received only limited information or assistance concerning the company." These steps highlight the judicial cooperation between Singapore and the United States, while the outcome of the Singapore investigation remains undisclosed.
On Huang’s case in Singapore, the ministry said the evidence was insufficient to prove that she had committed offenses related to potentially inaccurate declarations. But it concluded that she had provided information she knew was inaccurate in an effort to downplay her role at Megaspeed, and issued her an official warning and barred her from returning to the country. Police returned her passport on February 26, 2026, and she left Singapore the same day. That does not mean the broader investigation is closed; the ministry said investigations into Megaspeed and six other people are continuing. It added that none of the six people had been in Singapore since the investigation began in February 2025.
The new scrutiny comes amid a separate U.S. case involving the smuggling of Supermicro servers. In March, federal prosecutors charged the company’s co-founder, Yih-Shyan "Wally" Liaw, and two other people with directing servers equipped with Nvidia H200 and B200 units, worth about 2.5 billion dollars, to China through a front company in Southeast Asia. Supermicro was not charged in that case and said it was a victim of the scheme. The Justice Department alleged that a shipping company repackaged the servers in unmarked boxes to conceal their contents before sending them to China. The indictment added that documents and records were falsified to show that the Southeast Asian company was the end user, and that thousands of dummy servers were presented to inspectors.
The U.S. case is based on export restrictions that require licenses for transfers to China and Hong Kong of advanced AI accelerators and servers containing them, according to the Justice Department. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said the alleged diversion schemes "generate billions of dollars in illicit proceeds and pose a direct threat to U.S. national security," and vowed to continue the investigation and prosecution. In the case, co-defendant Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun pleaded guilty in October, including to a charge of deleting an encrypted messaging app from his phone on the day of the arrests, according to Fortune. Liaw’s trial was postponed to March 2027 after his lawyers said subpoenas directed to Supermicro could be material to his defense. Cooperation concerning the company and the course of the trial are expected to remain developments to watch in these cases.
In its coverage of investigations surrounding Nvidia, Fortune cited Bloomberg, which reported, based on an unnamed source, that the Justice Department was conducting multiple investigations: one into antitrust issues and two involving Megaspeed and Super Micro Computer. Bloomberg also reported in May that a Thai company linked to national AI efforts was suspected of helping divert Supermicro servers to China, and that Obon was the company identified in the U.S. indictment as "Company-1," according to people familiar with the matter cited by the outlet. Meanwhile, Supermicro said it had not been charged in the diversion case and that it was "fully cooperating with the government’s investigation and will continue to do so," according to the Associated Press. The company raised its fiscal 2026 revenue forecast to a range of 72–82 billion dollars, according to Fortune. Supermicro shares closed at 30.43 dollars on November 11, while Nvidia shares ended the session at 173.73 dollars, according to EL7 data.