- Authorities in Singapore detained three people on charges of deliberately misrepresenting the final destination of U.S.-manufactured servers.
- The servers likely contained Nvidia’s highly sought-after chips.
- Singapore accounted for 18% of Nvidia’s revenue in the fiscal year ended Jan. 28, based on “customer billing location,” but less than 2% of revenue in terms of products shipped to the country.
Alarm bells went off in 2024 when Singapore unexpectedly emerged as Nvidia’s
second-largest revenue source. The disclosure fueled widespread speculation that Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips were being channeled to China.
Those concerns intensified in January after China’s DeepSeek burst onto the international AI scene due to the sophistication and reported cost-effectiveness of its model. DeepSeek’s AI is trained on Nvidia’s graphics processing units despite export restrictions designed to keep the technology out of China.
Singapore has been working to dismantle a shadow network trafficking Nvidia’s cutting-edge AI chips, and late last week, authorities there detained three people on charges of deliberately misrepresenting the final destination of U.S.-manufactured servers, likely containing Nvidia’s highly sought-after chips.
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