U.S. Commerce Dept. Inquiry Into Megaspeed Was Halted After Nvidia Intervention

Suffield Academy placed its longtime head of school, Charlie Cahn III, on leave last month after learning that he was the subject of a federal investigation.

Nvidia is facing an unprecedented valuation test as a board inquiry into CEO Jensen Huang exposes the US chipmaker to a rare key-person risk, while investors also weigh the midterm elections’ potential impact on Washington’s chip controls and AI regulation. The company’s shares slumped 7.3 per cent as markets opened in the United States on Monday, following Huang’s bombshell confirmation over the weekend that he had been unfaithful to his wife and would cooperate with an investigation into his...

A little-known Singapore-registered company is embroiled in a mounting love scandal surrounding Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and US allegations of Chinese espionage. Huang’s admission of an extramarital affair has renewed scrutiny of Megaspeed, after media reports identified a former executive of the Singapore firm as the woman involved in the relationship, which US officials suspect was linked to Chinese espionage. Megaspeed, a major Nvidia customer, is believed to have been founded and led by...

The controversy has intensified scrutiny of Mr. Huang’s ties to Beijing and sparked mixed reactions across Asia, where he is widely popular.

As Nvidia launched an investigation into CEO Jensen Huang after he admitted to an extramarital affair, the repercussions threaten not only his three-decade tenure but also the future of the chip giant’s delicate semiconductor trade with China, according to lawyers and analysts. The world’s leading maker of chips for artificial intelligence systems faces an unprecedented corporate and geopolitical storm after its 63-year-old leader told employees that he was unfaithful to his wife and pledged to...

China’s artificial intelligence development is expanding beyond general large language models (LLMs) towards a new generation of specialised systems designed to solve real-world industrial problems, according to a leading computer science researcher. Cui Peng, an associate professor at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University, said that specialist systems capable of analysing industrial data, such as factory sensor readings and financial records, could become a crucial part of AI’s next phase in...

A growing dispute over former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak’s house arrest has thrust the attorney general’s powers into the spotlight, raising the spectre of a constitutional clash – though legal experts say it falls short of a full-blown crisis. Najib, 73, was due to move from Kajang Prison to his Kuala Lumpur home on Friday after his political party, Umno, paid a 50 million ringgit (US$12.3 million) fine, fulfilling a condition of a royal pardon issued in September allowing him to...

Indonesia will tighten controls on state ⁠surveillance equipment and consider ⁠sweeps of its presidential palace for bugging ⁠devices, a minister said on Monday, following last week’s discovery of illegal wiretaps on the president, top officials and more. The wiretapping scandal led to the arrest of four senior police officers accused of unauthorised monitoring of phones, among them a former national police chief ‌who had recently been appointed President Prabowo Subianto’s chief of staff. The...

A viral social media prank targeting Japanese police is sweeping across the country, with children as young as seven being caught in the act. Known as “Shorinji racing”, the trend involves minors shouting “Shorinji-ja” (“We are Shorinji”) at police officers in person or through false emergency calls from public telephones while peers record them, according to Jiji Press. Some have kicked doors and torn down posters at local police boxes, or koban. The perpetrators then flee or hang up before...

DeepSeek’s Harness artificial intelligence agent framework has reached 1.54 million daily active users less than three months after launch, the Chinese AI champion said on Sunday, marking rapid growth in a new battleground between leading Chinese and American AI giants. Users of Harness through the company’s official application programming interface were consuming around 92 trillion tokens a day as of November 4, the Hangzhou-based start-up said. That is equivalent to about 1.1 billion tokens...

Nearly eight years after a psychiatrist’s murder prompted South Korea to pass a new law that increased penalties for assaulting medical staff, another attack this month has doctors asking why the country’s hospitals are still unsafe. The attack at Severance Hospital in Seoul last Wednesday left the victim, a psychiatry professor surnamed Kang, with a severe hand injury that required surgery and cuts to his face and head. South Korea’s leading medical bodies have called for urgent new security...