Everyone wants to know who Megaspeed really is. Its staff records answer a big part of that. Megaspeed, the Singapore cloud company at the center of U.S. scrutiny of where Nvidia's chips end up and the Alice Huang reporting, has hired from Alibaba Cloud since day one. Its first hire joined in April 2024 from Alibaba Cloud Computing Co.'s mainland data center construction team, two months before Apex Enterprise Solutions, a Singapore company Culper Research says Alibaba owns, took a charge over Megaspeed's Malaysian business. Since then Megaspeed and Alibaba Cloud have traded data center engineers in the same industrial estate in Cikarang, West Java, under the same job titles.

Inside Nvidia, the people closest to Asia legal matters and to its chip partners left in 2026. Nvidia's general counsel for Asia-Pacific and India, based in Hong Kong, retired in October after 23 years; Nvidia had hired Intel's former Asia-Pacific general counsel in Singapore in March. Its vice president of global OEM platforms left in August after 26 years. Nvidia's legal departures in 2026 are more than double 2025's. In November 2026 the New York Times reported that the Commerce Department's Megaspeed inquiry was halted and transferred to the Justice Department after Nvidia's general counsel, Tim Teter, emailed the agents working the case.

Key points

For investors

The banks being asked to lend Bridge Data Centres $6.6 billion in November 2026 are lending to the group that hosted Megaspeed's servers. Bridge, a unit of Bain-owned Wintrix, formerly Chindata, was Megaspeed's largest site until it replaced Megaspeed with Zenlayer in February 2026, Bloomberg reported. Bloomberg also reports Bridge is in talks to more than double its $2.8 billion Malaysia loan, possibly launching as early as November 2026. The lenders have not been named. Any desk looking at that loan will want to know.

My read

Look past the headlines at who actually works there, and Megaspeed reads like an offshore extension of Alibaba Cloud's data center operation. Its first hire came from Alibaba Cloud. Its operators came from Alibaba Cloud and went back to it, in the same estate and under the same titles. By the FT's and Culper's accounts, its money came from an Alibaba subsidiary and Alibaba was its main customer. Megaspeed denies wrongdoing, and nothing here shows a breach of export law. It does show whose people built it.

At Nvidia, three people with more than two decades each at the company, in Asia legal, OEM partnerships and sales operations, left in 2026 while the Megaspeed probe ran. The Asia legal head retired, with a successor hired from Intel seven months earlier, and Nvidia's senior Asia lawyer now sits in Singapore, where Megaspeed is registered and under police investigation.

My call: more senior exits from Nvidia's Asia legal, compliance and partner teams over the next two quarters. I also expect Megaspeed's remaining staff to land at Alibaba Cloud and the contractors that run its data centers. They'll keep doing the same work under a different badge.

Megaspeed, through its people

Megaspeed's staff records show a company that hired from Alibaba Cloud from its first hire, worked in the same West Java estate as Alibaba Cloud, and has been shrinking since the investigations went public. It's a small company, so every move counts.

Shrinking since the probes. Megaspeed's staff peaked in August 2025, two months before the U.S. and Singapore investigations were confirmed, and has fallen since. Its only hire since March 2026 was a Group Financial Controller at director level in August, a former Deloitte audit manager. The same month, the employee who handled legal and government relations left for a Jakarta investment firm as a permits specialist. Legal walked out and an auditor walked in.

The money. Megaspeed's assets went from about $33 million at the end of 2023 to about $3 billion a year later, according to Reuters. The FT and Culper trace much of that to Apex, which took a charge over the whole business of Megaspeed's Malaysian unit, Speedmatrix, in June 2024.

Where Megaspeed's people went. Megaspeed's former operators stayed in the data center business. They went to Chinese clouds and to the contractors that run data centers for other owners, and two of them still work in Cikarang.

Role at MegaspeedNowLocationSince
Data center operations engineerEZSVS, data center operations engineerBangkokJun 2026
Facility and maintenance engineerJLL, data center shift lead, after VertivCikarang, West JavaAug 2026
Legal and government relationsAvantis Capital, permit and license specialistJakartaAug 2026
IT engineerAlibaba Cloud Global, after EZSVS Singapore and YTL AI CloudSedenak, JohorOct 2026
Data center engineerPure Data Centres GroupIndonesiaMay 2026
Server engineerCentral Data Technology, solutions architect for managed servicesSouth JakartaApr 2026
Data center engineerAlibaba Cloud, data center engineerCikarang, West JavaSep 2025
IT and data center engineerXignatureJakartaJul 2025
Data center operations cloud specialistHuawei Cloud Indonesia, same titleJakartaApr 2025

JLL and EZSVS operate data centers on contract for other owners. One Megaspeed engineer now runs shifts for JLL in Cikarang, and Megaspeed engineers are now on Alibaba Cloud's payroll in the same estate. So whose hardware are those sites running now, and under whose name? That's the question I'd be asking.

Inside Nvidia

Nvidia isn't losing more people than usual for its size. It's losing older, more senior people, and in 2026 that included the people closest to Asian legal matters and to the partners its chips are sold through.

RoleYears at NvidiaLeftNext role
VP, Global OEM Platforms and Solutions26Aug 2026None listed
General Counsel, Asia-Pacific & India (Hong Kong)23Oct 2026Retired
Senior Sales Operations Manager25Oct 2026None listed
Senior OEM Support Engineer21Oct 2026None listed
Manager, HR Operations & Benefits (Shanghai)10Oct 2026None listed

Legal. Legal departures in 2026 are already more than double all of 2025, while legal hiring held level. The Asia-Pacific general counsel, at Nvidia since 2003, retired in October, seven months after his successor was hired. On November 9 the New York Times reported that Nvidia's general counsel, Tim Teter, emailed the Commerce Department agents on the Megaspeed case in August 2025, before the case moved to the Justice Department. Nothing public connects the Asia-Pacific counsel's departure to that matter.

Singapore. In March 2026 Nvidia hired a Senior Director, Legal in Singapore who had spent twelve years as Intel's general counsel for Asia-Pacific and Japan. Nvidia's senior Asia lawyer now sits in Singapore, the jurisdiction where Megaspeed is registered and under police investigation. The same month, Nvidia hired a new Vice President for ASEAN enterprise from AWS.

Compliance. Nvidia's risk and compliance team grew steadily through the first half of 2026 and did not lose a single person between February and June.

Sovereign AI. In July 2026 a director of deep learning and AI in Nvidia's Global AI Nations group, the team that works with governments building national AI capacity, left after two years in the role and is now on a career break.

OEM and sales operations. The Information reports that when restricted orders stalled, Alice Huang went through Nvidia and its distributors to move them. OEM platforms and sales operations are the functions that manage those partners and process those orders. Both lost people with more than two decades at the company in 2026.

Seniority. Senior staff, managers, directors and VPs made up under a fifth of Nvidia's August engineering departures in 2024. In August 2026 they were nearly a third. Nearly three times as many engineers with eight or more years at the company left. Between April and October 2026 a VP of software engineering, a director of hardware engineering with 24 years at Nvidia, and the former chief engineer for DGX and HGX systems all stepped away into retirement or career breaks. Most of the long-tenured leavers list no next employer, which fits retirement on vested stock as well as quieter exits.

Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei

The same three Chinese cloud companies sit at every point in this network, and their people move between them. Huawei, the competitor U.S. export controls are meant to hold back, turns up three separate times.

CompanyWhere it appears
Alibaba CloudMegaspeed's first hire and operators came from it and returned to it; Apex, the Megaspeed lender Culper says Alibaba owns; Megaspeed's main customer
TencentCentury Litong's servers sat in Tencent's Shanghai supercomputing center; Tencent owns 10% of Century Litong's founding shareholder's parent
HuaweiCentury Litong's Shenzhen site was being built to Huawei Cloud's order; a Megaspeed operator moved to Huawei Cloud Indonesia; an analyst at Alice Huang's former fund came from Huawei's chip unit and went to its investment arm

Tencent is building abroad with Huawei's sellers. Through 2026 Tencent Cloud hired Huawei Cloud's international sales staff: Asia-Pacific enterprise account managers, a technical account manager for international projects, and a senior financial services seller from Huawei Cloud Brasil. Several joined in June. Tencent Cloud runs a São Paulo region.

The offshore Nvidia route is closing. In November Oracle cancelled a five-year lease that would have given Tencent about 100,000 advanced AI chips in Southeast Asian data centers, after U.S. officials raised concerns, and Nvidia told its cloud partners to keep Chinese customers below half of their capacity, the FT reported.

Tencent now has Huawei Cloud's former sellers on its international team and less access to Nvidia capacity outside China. I expect more of Tencent's overseas hires to come from Huawei Cloud, and I expect the capacity they sell to lean less on Nvidia.

Century Litong: the paper trail and the money

Century Litong is a listed company's subsidiary, so its paper trail is public. Jiangsu Lettall's own filings lay out what it was built to do, whom it would serve and how it was paid for.

The buyer. Jiangsu Lettall Electronic was founded in 1991 in Yixing and makes components for televisions, LCD modules and air conditioners. In June 2023 it agreed to pay 450 million yuan for 90% of Shanghai Century Litong Data Service, a company registered the previous day with 50 million yuan of capital. The seller was Shanghai Century Longteng Data, which kept 10%. Lettall's shares rose the daily limit on the announcement.

The customers named on day one. Lettall said Century Litong would supply computing power to Tencent's Yangtze River Delta AI supercomputing center in Songjiang, Shanghai, and to Century Longteng's Guangming 5G big data center in Shenzhen. Century Huatong's filings show that in May 2022 the Shenzhen site's operator, Shenzhen Yifeng, controlled by Century Longteng, won Huawei Cloud's tender for a custom data center there and began the first phase on Huawei Cloud's order, with Century Huatong guaranteeing 100 million yuan of related debt. Huawei has been on the U.S. Entity List since 2019. Century Huatong also helped Tencent build and run the Songjiang center.

The partner status. By October 2023, four months after registration, Century Litong held preferred cloud partner status with Nvidia, according to The Information. That status gives priority access to supply.

The family link. The Information reports the founding shareholder was ultimately controlled by Alice Huang's sister, Huang Yu, and exited in 2024. Lettall's filings name Century Longteng as that founding shareholder, and name its controller as Zhejiang Century Huatong Group (002602.SZ), a listed game company 10% owned by Tencent. In December 2023, two months after Century Litong gained Nvidia preferred partner status, Lettall agreed to buy a further 5.1% from Century Longteng for 13.4 million yuan. Century Litong's net assets were 500 million yuan at the end of September 2023, so the founding shareholder sold at roughly half of book value. It sold the rest in May 2024.

The related parties. In 2025 the Shanghai exchange questioned Lettall about Century Litong. Lettall's response disclosed that the supervisor Century Longteng appointed to Century Litong had also sat as supervisor at one of Century Litong's customers and at one of its suppliers, Shanghai Jitie Network Technology, a Century Longteng investee. Lettall does not name Century Litong's customers, citing confidentiality.

The money. Lettall has guaranteed Century Litong's equipment financing with Chinese financial leasing companies: Suyin Financial Leasing in June 2024, Jiangnan Financial Leasing in July 2024 and Chongqing Xinyu Financial Leasing in November 2024. In 2026 its board raised credit lines to 15 billion yuan and guarantees to 12 billion yuan across five subsidiaries, including Century Litong and two Singapore companies, Lettall Holdings (Singapore) and LETACT Cloud. In April 2026 Century Litong sold a batch of its computing equipment to an unnamed "Company A" for 420 million yuan and leased it back.

The economics. Century Litong booked about 1 billion yuan of revenue and 230.1 million yuan of net profit in 2025. Lettall's AI computing segment grew 163.53% to 1.2 billion yuan, about 36% of group revenue, and group net profit rose more than tenfold. A TV-parts maker from Yixing is now an AI compute business, thanks to one subsidiary registered the day before the deal.

What The Information reports. Century Litong rented computing capacity and ran data centers on Nvidia chips, some of them barred from sale to China, and some of that capacity served Alibaba, Tencent and smaller Chinese AI labs. When restricted orders stalled, Alice Huang used her ties to Nvidia and its distributors to move them, the report says. Nvidia denies breaching export controls, and no charges have been reported against Alice Huang, Century Litong or Lettall.

What I'm watching

People move before filings do. The next signals will show up in hiring before they hit a filing or the November 17 call.

Timeline

Reported events are attributed; Nvidia departures are from its own staff records.

DateEvent
Jun 1, 2023Shanghai Century Litong registered; Jiangsu Lettall agrees the next day to take 90% for 450 million yuan
20237Road, a Chinese game company with state-backed investors, spins its Singapore unit into Megaspeed
Oct 2023Century Litong holds Nvidia preferred cloud partner status, per The Information
Dec 2023Lettall agrees to buy a further 5.1% of Century Litong from Century Longteng for 13.4 million yuan
2024Century Litong's founding shareholder, linked by The Information to Huang Yu, exits
Apr 2024Megaspeed's first hire joins from Alibaba Cloud
Jun 2024Jensen Huang joins Alice Huang and Asian customers at a Taipei bar during Computex; Apex takes a charge over Speedmatrix
2024A Commerce Department official visits Megaspeed's Malaysia data center and finds Nvidia equipment still boxed
May 22, 2025Jensen Huang and Alice Huang photographed at a Taipei dinner
Aug 2025Nvidia's general counsel emails Commerce agents on the Megaspeed case, per the New York Times
Oct 9–10, 2025U.S. and Singapore investigations of Megaspeed confirmed
Spring 2026Administration memo circulates naming Alice Huang as a Ministry of State Security asset
Aug 2026Nvidia's VP of Global OEM Platforms leaves after 26 years; Megaspeed's legal lead leaves and a financial controller arrives
Oct 2026Nvidia's General Counsel, Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong) retires after 23 years; a 25-year sales operations manager leaves
Oct 29, 2026The New York Times reports the relationship
Nov 5, 2026Three House committee chairmen request a closed-door briefing from Jensen Huang
Nov 8, 2026Jensen Huang admits infidelity in a letter to staff; Nvidia's board opens an independent investigation
Nov 9, 2026The New York Times reports the Commerce probe of Megaspeed moved to the Justice Department after Nvidia's general counsel contacted agents
Nov 10, 2026The Information ties Century Litong to at least $7.5 billion in Nvidia chips, about 240,000 H100, H200 and A100 units
Nov 17, 2026Nvidia reports fiscal Q3 FY27 (Aug–Oct 2026)

Staff records as of November 10, 2026.

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More on the people behind AI infrastructure:

Amanda Goodall, founder of Goodall Research: capital, the people who move it, and the companies it moves.

Disclosure: I do not hold a position in NVDA, Jiangsu Lettall (603629.SH) or any company named here. This is research, not investment advice. Reported allegations are attributed to their sources; no wrongdoing has been established by any person or company named.