China's artificial intelligence (AI) industry may still be heavily dependent on restricted Nvidia chips despite Beijing's push for semiconductor self-reliance, with a network of companies linked to Alice Huang emerging as a key player in the country's grey-market chip ecosystem, according to an investigation by The Information.
Speaking to NDTV Profit, Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief at The Information, said companies connected to Huang were given access to DeepSeek's highly sought-after funding rounds this year on the promise that they could source Nvidia chips through the black market, which have become increasingly difficult to obtain following the US crackdown on chip smuggling.
Yang said Huang and her associates were relatively unknown entities before the investigation brought their activities into focus. However, their role in facilitating access to restricted AI chips could be significant.
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According to The Information's investigation, a group of companies linked to Huang in China imported approximately 240,000 Nvidia chips since 2023, with the value of these shipments estimated at a minimum of $7.5 billion.
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Yang said this figure could represent only a fraction of the total volume of Nvidia chips diverted into China through Southeast Asian supply chains.
She pointed to earlier reports about Singapore-based Mega Speed, which had reportedly imported around $4.6 billion worth of chips, adding that the latest investigation has significantly expanded the understanding of the scale of these transactions.
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Another significant finding was that DeepSeek employees themselves introduced companies linked to Huang to investors, describing them as substantial suppliers of Nvidia AI chips.
Yang said the development highlights how deeply the grey-market chip ecosystem is embedded in China's AI industry.
She noted that China's efforts to achieve semiconductor self-reliance would take several years, making access to advanced Nvidia processors critical for its AI ambitions in the interim.
According to Yang, DeepSeek's latest V4 model and Moonshot's Kimi K3 model were trained on Nvidia's Blackwell chips.
She added that although US and Singaporean investigations have made chip smuggling considerably more difficult since 2024, companies linked to Huang were among the few that continued to facilitate access to Blackwell processors.
Yang also questioned Nvidia's assertion that its revenue from China had fallen to zero, suggesting that the scale of reported chip diversion indicates that demand for its products continues to find alternative channels.
She expects further reporting and investigations to uncover the extent of chip diversion from Southeast Asia into China.
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