A sudden change in how Nvidia reported some of its financial results last year is getting renewed attention, raising questions about its relationship with Megaspeed, a major Nvidia client at the time and now at the center of chip smuggling allegations.
The financial change under scrutiny involves Nvidia’s accounting for revenue from Singapore, where Megaspeed is based.
Nvidia cofounder Jensen Huang stepped down as CEO of the semiconductor chip giant on Thursday, following stunning revelations of his affair with former Megaspeed executive Alice Huang (no relation), a woman suspected of being an operative for China. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress will lead the company in the interim, Nvidia announced on Thursday.
Megaspeed, one of Nvidia’s largest buyers in Asia, has been suspected of diverting Nvidia’s advanced chips to China, in violation of U.S. export laws. Megaspeed, and its Malaysian subsidiary Speedmatric, moved at least $7.5 billion in Nvidia chips to China, tech news site The Information has reported.
Singapore authorities said on Thursday that they investigated Megaspeed and its former executive Alice Huang beginning in February 2025 and did not find sufficient evidence of espionage. However, Singapore barred Alice Huang from re-entering the country. The U.S. is also investigating Megaspeed for export control violations. Jensen Huang has previously said there is no evidence of Nvidia chips being smuggled to China, and Megaspeed has denied wrongdoing.
In June 2025, Nvidia added Megaspeed to its internal block list, prohibiting sales to the company, according to the Wall Street Journal. Around the same time, Nvidia stopped reporting revenue from Singapore, one of the five geographic areas Nvidia had previously listed in its breakdown of global revenues (they were U.S., Singapore, Taiwan, China, and “Other”).
In the fiscal quarter ending in July 2025, Nvidia reported $10.2 billion in revenue from Singapore, 22% of the company’s total revenue, and an 81% increase in year-over-year revenue from the country. In the next quarter’s earnings report, for the three months ending in October 2025, Singapore had disappeared from Nvidia’s geographic revenue breakdown, which now listed only four markets: U.S., Taiwan, China, and Other.
According to the October 2025 earnings report, Nvidia was now separating out markets based on “location of the customers’ headquarters” instead of “customer billing location.” The change was made even though Nvidia’s previous earnings reports had clearly stated that “customers use Singapore to centralize invoicing while our products are almost always shipped elsewhere.”
Nvidia did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment, including an inquiry if the change in how it reported its earnings was at all connected to it adding Megaspeed to its block list.
Making sense of the unlisted Singapore revenue
Shiva Rajgopal, a professor of accounting and auditing at Columbia Business School, told Fortune correlation is not causation, and it is impossible to say with just public information whether concerns around Megaspeed’s export control adherence or Alice Huang’s alleged espionage caused Nvidia to change how it reported revenue. However, he noted, Nvidia’s changes in the filings will no doubt become part of the Department of Justice or Department of Commerce’s investigations into Nvidia’s export control compliance.
“The timing is curious,” Rajgopal said. “Even if it is not curious, people are going to raise questions given all this information now.”
Auditors will likely look at what Nvidia knew about where the Megaspeed chips were ending up, how Nvidia checked and documented customer end-use, and if Huang’s affair was related to Nvidia’s business with Megaspeed. But they will also look at whether investors were given an accurate picture of the risks associated with potential smuggling in China and Southeast Asia. Rajgopal made it clear that as CFO, Kress’ role in how finances were disclosed publicly, will certainly be scrutinized, but based on public filings alone, there does not appear to be evidence at this time showing Kress was aware of whether an earnings reporting change could have potentially been related to Megaspeed.
“I wouldn’t say Kress must have known,” Rajgopal said. “These are just financial statements. Nothing is illegal. It’s disclosed.”
Rajgopal argued Kress’s biggest challenge has little to do with the company’s past or immediate finances. Finance executives who take interim chief executive roles in tech companies rarely stay because they lack the buy-in of the tech community, he said. Nvidia’s priorities will soon shift from sustaining its financial momentum today to working to recreate or build upon the forward vision Huang gave the company, which is a decidedly different role than a finance head.
“A CFO running a tech company is not a good idea,” Rajgopal said, “especially something that’s so deeply tech-heavy.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com