A single unit of Nvidia's latest data-centre hardware starts at about $50,000 (£37,000), and a medium or large facility may need hundreds of them. At that price, demand still outruns supply. That is why the company, which makes the best chips for artificial intelligence, has become a pawn in a contest between Washington and Beijing. President Donald Trump has argued that whoever wins the AI race wins outright, because the country with the dominant technology will, in the end, hold the most power.

Washington first banned exports of Nvidia's more recent devices to China, then softened the rules somewhat. Enforcement is the difficult part. Bloomberg reported that Megaspeed, a firm run at the time by Alice Huang, bought billions of dollars' worth of Nvidia technology in November 2025, and there are suggestions that some of it may have reached China. Megaspeed denies that anything was used illegitimately.

The story is more awkward for Nvidia because of a personal link. Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, has been linked to Alice Huang, and the company now faces uncomfortable questions: did she gain special access to its newest technology, deliberately or not, and did she pass anything to Beijing or others? China denies that she was engaged in espionage, and nothing has been proven. Economic espionage is neither new nor unique to China, but Western governments say Beijing practises it on a vast scale, using both digital tools and agents inside private companies.