SINGAPORE (AFP): Singapore has denied investigating a Chinese executive reportedly close to Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, rejecting claims made in a Wall Street Journal report that authorities were "concerned" about possible Chinese espionage.
The Journal said in an article published on Friday that officials in the United States, Taiwan and Singapore "have grown concerned" about the ties between the Nvidia boss and Alice Huang of Singapore-based data centre firm Megaspeed International.
The ties "potentially" gave "Beijing access to information about the world's most valuable artificial-intelligence chips", the report said.
Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said at the weekend that neither the government nor officials had expressed concerns about Alice Huang's ties to the Nvidia boss or suspicions she was a Chinese intelligence source.
"The WSJ article cites sources that Singapore officials were concerned with Alice Huang's close ties to Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang or her being an alleged Chinese intelligence source, and had separately investigated her ties to China," the ministry said in a statement issued Saturday.
"We would like to make clear that neither the Singapore Government nor its officials said this. And there were no such investigations conducted in respect of Alice Huang."
Nvidia is the world's most valuable company thanks to the global drive to build data centres packed with specialist computer chips and other hardware that runs AI systems.
The Singaporean statement made no mention of a separate report by the New York Times, which China described on Friday as "groundless speculation".
That report said that the Nvidia chief was the target of a Chinese spy plot and also mentioned his ties with Alice Huang.
AFP attempted to contact Megaspeed for comment on Friday, but when calling the phone number listed on its website, the person who answered said they were unfamiliar with the company and that the number was a residential line. -- AFP
