Editor’s Note: The following situation is extremely fast-moving and it’s likely that more information gets reported both after I finish writing it and after it goes to press. As a result, the story may change in unexpected ways.
I’m not gonna lie — it’s been one of the most enjoyable weeks of writing in my entire life. As I discussed in this week’s free newsletter, Jensen Huang's tryst with an alleged spy running a front for the Chinese to buy GPUs is just the tip of the iceberg of an NVIDIA-backed smuggling ring, one that may, per Culper Research, account for more than 20% (over $43 billion) of NVIDIA’s Fiscal Year 2026 revenue.
And now Jensen Huang is no longer CEO of NVIDIA, replaced by CFO Colette Kress.
I also cannot express how many notes, connections, and sidequests got left on the cutting room floor as I wrote this week’s free piece piece, which may seem surprising given that it was over 7800 god damn words. Megaspeed — and its connected entities — represents a sprawling, multinational smuggling operation that goes far beyond NVIDIA, Jensen, Alice, or even China. And, more fundamentally, it’s just weird.
Up until as recently as last week, talking about NVIDIA’s illicit shipments of GPUs would have seen you branded a conspiracy theorist or a “doomer,” mostly because the allegations are so severe, but also because NVIDIA’s bull run was so impressive and rapid, the idea that any meaningful part of it was the result of anything underhand simply couldn’t register with the most dented cheerleaders for the AI bubble.
And yet, none of this should have been a surprise. Culper’s research — which I referenced heavily in the free piece — was published in May 2026, and it formed part of the basis for its short position. And it needs to be stressed how significant this is, and how much peril Culper would find itself in if it turned out to be wrong — and, therefore, how confident it was in its findings.
If Culper was wrong, it didn’t open itself up to potential civil action (US defamation law sets a higher bar than in other countries, like the UK or Australia, but it still exists), but also, if you’re wrong when making a short, the losses are theoretically infinite.
The Wall Street Journal’s piece (that ran on Wednesday) fails to square the circle of how the largest media outlets in the world ignored the story entirely, yet the most damning part is that even in accepting that Culper might be onto something, the Journal fails to mention that 20% of NVIDIA’s Fiscal Year 2026 revenue might have come from China, nor does it make any attempts to discuss the contents of the report.
In short, it treats Culper’s research — and the Jensen Huang infidelity — as a sort-of turbocharged tabloid scuttlebut, rather than looking at the bigger picture, which is that the (intermittently) biggest company in the world had lied about how and where it makes its money, and whether a significant chunk of its revenues came from illicit sources.
That’s because (like so much in the AI bubble) once you actually consider the contents — the scale of the smuggling, the massive amounts of “sanctioned” silicon that still makes it to China, and the amount of American counterparties (like Super Micro) involved — it becomes clear that NVIDIA has repeatedly and unashamedly profited from breaking the law.
Nobody wants to talk about the elephant in the room — that NVIDIA is ultimately a dodgy company that misleads its customers, investors and the general public, and I believe that the business and tech journalism ecosystem has helped it varnish its reputation again and again.
People are so quick to forget that NVIDIA was fined by the SEC less than four years ago for misleading investors in 2017 (Fiscal Year 2018, beginning in February 2017), when it claimed that its surge of revenue growth came from gamers buying graphics cards rather than cryptocurrency mining operators.
Per the SEC:
In two of its Forms 10-Q for its fiscal year 2018, NVIDIA reported material growth in revenue within its gaming business. NVIDIA had information, however, that this increase in gaming sales was driven in significant part by cryptomining. Despite this, NVIDIA did not disclose in its Forms 10-Q, as it was required to do, these significant earnings and cash flow fluctuations related to a volatile business for investors to ascertain the likelihood that past performance was indicative of future performance.
And just like with the AI bubble, some members of the media fell over themselves to sell the narrative to investors, unrepentantly repeating Jensen’s fictitious narrative about gaming driving its GPU sales, with GamesBeat printing one of the most damning quotes in history:
GamesBeat: Did you say a hallelujah for cryptocurrency?
Jen-Hsun Huang: No? Cryptocurrency is around. But it represented only a couple hundred million dollars, maybe $150 million or so. There’s still crypto mining to go to, currency mining. It comes and goes. It’ll come again. Somebody will come up with new hardware. Digital currency is not going away. It’s here to stay.
GamesBeat: So it’s helpful, but it’s not a gold rush that Nvidia is selling the picks and shovels for?
Huang: No, not a gold rush per se. We’re not opposed to it. But our core business is elsewhere.
It turned out this was a bag of bollocks.
This isn’t the only time the SEC has slapped NVIDIA around. Back in 2002, NVIDIA settled — albeit without paying a fine — with the SEC after it was revealed that its April 2000 quarter artificially inflated its gross profit and gross margins by showing a $3.3 million cost reduction from a supplier…but had also agreed to increase what it was paying to that supplier in August 2000…by $3.299 million:
On May 16, 2000, Nvidia issued a press release reporting record financial results for the quarter ended April 30, 2000. The reported results exceeded consensus external forecasts for revenue, income, earnings per share, and gross margin. On June 14, 2000, Nvidia filed with the Commission its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 30, 2000. Among the record financial results reported, Nvidia highlighted the "substantial growth in gross profit and gross profit margin" for the quarter. By including the $3.3 million in reduced costs from Nvidia's supplier but omitting any corresponding deduction for the agreement to reimburse the same amount, the press release and the Form 10-Q were false and misleading when made.
On April 29, 2002, following an internal investigation by its audit committee, Nvidia restated its financial results for the quarter ended April 30, 2000. The previously recognized $3.3 million in cost reduction from Nvidia's supplier was reversed. The restatement revealed that, as a result of the transaction described above, as originally reported, Nvidia's gross profit was overstated by 6.4%, net income by 15.3%, and diluted earnings per share by 14.8%.
NVIDIA escaped any fine or real punishment, though its CFO was forced to pay a $672,000 settlement for accounting fraud.
Then there’s the time in the middle of 2025 when NVIDIA started using multiple underhanded techniques to (and I quote The Verge) “delay, derail, and manipulate reviews of its $299 GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card,” deliberately launching it while most reviewers would be in Taiwan for Computex, refusing to provide drivers for the card until it went on sale, and only allowing “cherry-picked” reviewers access to drivers if they “agreed to a borderline unethical deal…where they’d test specific games at 1080p resolution with fixed graphics settings against two weaker GPUs (the 3060 and 2060 Super) where the new card would be sure to win.”
They then made the mistake of pissing off GamersNexus, one of the best-known hardware reviewers in the industry:
…the 5060’s lackluster improvements are overshadowed by a juicier story: inexplicably, Nvidia decided to threaten GamersNexus’ future access over its GPU coverage. Yes, the same GamersNexus that’s developed a staunch reputation for defending consumers from predatory behavior, and just last month published a report on “GPU shrinkflation” that accused Nvidia of misleading marketing. Bad move!
In a 22-minute video, GN claims Nvidia threatened to cut off access to Nvidia’s cooling and latency experts unless GN agreed to do the thing you see in the charts above — compare cards with fake frames to cards without. GN claims it has the recorded phone conversations to prove it, which are likely legal because Nvidia was recording them too
I mention all of this because I need you to know exactly what kind of company NVIDIA is — a corporate bully that uses its outsized influence to manipulate investors and the media to pump up its sales.
And a few days ago, we found out that Mr. Huang is far more loose with his hips and his lips than we thought, with the New York Times reporting that he had an affair with NVIDIA healthcare VP Kimberly Powell…and the company attempted to cover it up:
During the conference, Nvidia executives were at a nearby hotel for meetings. Mr. Huang and Ms. Powell were seen being affectionate at the hotel. One bystander captured the interaction on their phone, three people briefed on the incident said.
Mr. Huang’s security witnessed the bystander with their phone and sequestered them, the people said. They made the person an offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement
The next day, it came out that Jensen had another affair with another NVIDIA employee.
All of this is important context for today’s newsletter, where I’ll dig into the vast, ungainly smuggling network underpinning one of the biggest scandals in the history of the tech industry, and why it’s time to accept the truth: we can’t trust a damn word that Jensen Huang or NVIDIA says.