Chips

Megaspeed moved nearly $12 billion of Nvidia chips to Chinese buyers, and the Journal calls the route legal

The Journal calls the pipeline Huang built legal on its face, so only US enforcement can shut it, and Southeast Asian operators are bracing for exactly that two days before Nvidia's first earnings without him.

Richard TangRichard Tangthree-minute read
Share
Jensen Huang, in a black leather jacket, seated in an armchair on a stage with one hand raised mid-sentence
1 / 7Slide 1 of 7
Jensen Huang, Nvidia's co-founder and chief executive, at a Stanford Graduate School of Business discussion on April 9, 2026, seven months before he resigned as CEO.

Megaspeed, the Singapore company at the center of the arrangement, coordinated deliveries of nearly $12 billion of advanced semiconductors to Chinese firms between March 2024 and June 2025, the Wall Street Journal's records show, and the paper calls the structure legal on its face 1. Jensen Huang cultivated the Asian partner network behind it 1. That legality changes what kind of risk Nvidia−3.21% — Nvidia, down 3.21 percent today carries into Tuesday's earnings, its first print since Huang resigned as CEO on November 12: the threat to the route is enforcement, not fraud 1.

The route never crossed a border

Chinese hyperscalers including Tencent, Alibaba−0.74% — Alibaba, down 0.74 percent today and ByteDance rent American compute from data centers across Southeast Asia instead of importing chips into China 2. The chips are identical, the controls are geographic, and the work of threading between them is done by logistics and contracts, not by anyone breaking a rule. A report published on November 13 had already tied Huang's network to a Huawei Cloud data center and to $7.5 billion of Megaspeed shipments 1; the new facts since are the Journal's higher total and Huang named as the route's builder, plus operators warning a crackdown is coming.

The route is legal until the rules move

Enforcement can touch what technology cannot. Washington can rewrite the rules for data centers outside China without touching Nvidia's products, and operators across Southeast Asia now expect exactly that, the Australian Financial Review reports 2. The route's traffic is visible in the models it fed: a US research group found Blackwell, Nvidia's current top-end data center GPU architecture, in six Chinese models released since April, estimating roughly 12,000 of those GPUs behind China's large-scale training, though the researchers caution they could not locate the chips physically 3.

Guidance already assumes zero China revenue

For holders the question is narrower. Nvidia guided to $108 billion of revenue with no China data center compute revenue assumed 7, so the street's own forecast already excludes the back door, and Chinese training demand will shift to whatever arrangement replaces the route if it closes.

Nvidia's quarterly revenue has nearly tripled in two years, and it guides to $108 billion

  • Revenue
  • Estimate
$20B$40B$60B$80B$100B$120BQ3 '24Q1 '25Q3 '25Q1 '26Q3 '26 guide$108B$96.22B
Data
Revenue
Q3 '24$35.08B
Q4 '24$39.33B
Q1 '25$44.06B
Q2 '25$46.74B
Q3 '25$57.01B
Q4 '25$68.13B
Q1 '26$81.62B
Q2 '26$96.22B
Q3 '26 guide (estimate)$108B
Nvidia revenue by fiscal quarter, in US dollars billions, from its SEC filings: Q3 fiscal 2024 (ended October 2024) through Q2 fiscal 2026 (ended July 2026). The last point is the company's own $108 billion guidance for the quarter it reports on November 17, an estimate, and that guidance assumes no China data center compute revenue. Sources: Nvidia SEC filings; 24/7 Wall St., November 12, 2026.7,8

The China line and the clock on enforcement

Two things matter on Tuesday: whether guidance still assumes zero China data center compute revenue, and whether any enforcement action lands before the print or after it.

Nvidia fell after three of its last four earnings reports

-10%-5%0%5%10%Nov 2025Feb 2026May 2026Aug 20268.7%
Data
Day-after move
Nov 2025-3.2%
Feb 2026-5.5%
May 2026-1.8%
Aug 20268.7%
Nvidia share move the trading day after each earnings report, from the report-day close. November 2025 through August 2026. Source: 24/7 Wall St., November 12, 2026.7

The surrounding tape has already turned cautious. Bank of America+0.71% — Bank of America, up 0.71 percent today removed Nvidia from its US 1 list, the bank's top stock picks, on November 10 while keeping its Buy rating and explaining nothing 4; the shares fell 1.88% to $175.31 that day after a 4.27% slide the day before 4. The route's fate is not in that guidance, but the crackdown operators expect would be the next fact that moves it 2.

Sources: 1. AI Weekly, 'WSJ: Huang personally built Asia route feeding Nvidia GPUs to China', November 15, 2026 — https://aiweekly.co/alerts/wsj-huang-personally-built-asia-route-feeding-nvidia-gpus-to-china 2. Australian Financial Review, 'Jensen Huang's affair will shut back-door trade of AI chips to China', November 15, 2026 — https://www.afr.com/world/asia/jensen-huang-s-affair-will-shut-back-door-trade-of-ai-chips-to-china-20261115-p61d8g 3. Chosunbiz, 'U.S. lab says Chinese AI models trained on Nvidia Blackwell chips despite sanctions', November 15, 2026 — https://biz.chosun.com/en/en-international/2026/11/15/B6R7HRHBHFD3NLPWEC2VJK6DLY/ 4. TradingView (GuruFocus), 'Micron−4.50% — Micron, down 4.50 percent today, Nvidia and Lam Research−4.53% — Lam Research, down 4.53 percent today Removed From BofA's Top Stock List', November 10, 2026 — https://www.tradingview.com/news/gurufocus:ef2903321094b:0-micron-nvidia-and-lam-research-removed-from-bofa-s-top-stock-list/ 7. 24/7 Wall St., 'Nvidia Reports Earnings Tuesday Without Jensen Huang for the First Time', November 12, 2026 — https://247wallst.com/investing/2026/11/12/nvidia-reports-earnings-tuesday-without-jensen-huang-for-the-first-time-it-promised-108-billion-and-the-stock-fell-after-3-of-its-last-4-reports/

Get Chips by email, free

How AI demand is reshaping chipmakers, memory and the fabs behind them. In our daily email, every weekday.

Loading NVDA

More about NVIDIA

NVDAFiscal Q2 2027
Fiscal Q2 2027 · quarter to 26 Jul 2026 · changes vs a year earlier

Revenue rose 106% to $96.2B, 92.5% of it from Data Center, “driven by the ramp of our Blackwell Ultra infrastructure”. Gains on equity stakes of $7.8B lifted net income to $59.7B.

Revenue$96.2B▲ 106%
Gross margin75.0%▲ 2.6 pts
Operating margin66.2%▲ 5.4 pts
Net income$59.7B▲ 126%
Hyperscale$48.7B▲ 102%AI clouds & enterprise$40.3B▲ 138%Data Center$89.0B▲ 117%Edge Computing$7.2B▲ 27%Revenue$96.2B▲ 106%Gross profit$72.1B75.0% marginCost of revenue$24.1BOther income$7.8Bequity-stake gainsOperating income$63.7B66.2% marginOperating expenses$8.4BNet income$59.7B▲ 126%Tax$11.8B16.5% rateR&D$7.1BSG&A$1.4B
Show as a table
LineValue
Revenue$96.2B
Gross margin75.0%
Operating margin66.2%
Net income$59.7B
Hyperscale$48.7B
AI clouds & enterprise$40.3B
Data Center$89.0B
Edge Computing$7.2B
Gross profit$72.1B
Cost of revenue$24.1B
Other income$7.8B
Operating income$63.7B
Operating expenses$8.4B
Tax$11.8B
R&D$7.1B
SG&A$1.4B

Reader comments

0 comments

    Chips

    Nvidia opens its first CEO search in 33 years with Jensen Huang keeping a $132 billion stake

    The board that accepted Jensen Huang's resignation on November 11 handed Nvidia to a finance chief who has never run a profit-and-loss, while the founder's family holds posts across marketing, robotics and AI infrastructure. Tuesday's earnings and a February selling window will price how long the vacuum lasts.

    Chips

    Nvidia bankrolled its own GPU customers as an 'avalanche' of TSMC wafers loomed, WSJ reports

    Nvidia took 19 percent of TSMC's revenue last year, so whether interim chief Colette Kress unwinds the financing that propped up GPU demand is now a TSMC question, priced daily in its New York shares.

    Chips

    Lumentum's $43.5 million deposit leads $92 million of AXT prepayments that may be refunded

    Customers including Lumentum prepaid to reserve indium phosphide wafer capacity at AXT, whose wafers carry the lasers inside AI data centers. The 10-Q filed on November 12 says missed capacity, delivery or Beijing export-permit commitments can turn those deposits into refunds, hitting revenue and liquidity.

    Chips

    Goldman prices Cambricon at 40 times 2027 earnings on a US chip rule that is not final

    Goldman's November 11 China note, which no English-language outlet appears to have reported, prices the suppliers selling into the global build-out at 7 to 8 times 2027 earnings and Cambricon, the domestic substitute, at 40. Cambricon's 22% week rests on a US rule to bar Chinese labs from renting chips abroad, and that rule has not been finalized.

    Chips

    Lightwave Logic booked $37,500 of quarterly revenue; its cash carries it to March 2028

    Lightwave Logic's new 10-Q puts its funding horizon and its promised revenue in the same year, and the at-the-market stock program that paid for 2026 is already exhausted. Shareholders carry the whole bridge to 2028.

    Chips

    KLA executives sold $93.5 million in six months and not one bought a share

    Wallace's November 12 Form 4 records a sale scheduled a year ago. Around it sit six months of KLA insider selling worth about $93.5 million and not one purchase, which is what the market is repricing as Congress moves on chip-equipment exports.

    Subscribe to TheInference for free