Nvidia’s headquarters on Feb. 26, 2025, in Santa Clara, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Photos
Malaysia mentioned it is going to take “vital motion” towards Malaysian corporations if they’re discovered to be concerned in a fraud case linked to the alleged motion of Nvidia chips from Singapore to China.
That comes after Singapore Regulation and House Affairs Minister Ok Shanmugam reportedly said on Monday that the servers within the fraud case might have contained Nvidia’s synthetic intelligence chips which have been then despatched to Malaysia.
On Feb. 27, Singapore charged three males with fraud, with local broadcaster CNA saying it understood the instances are linked to the alleged motion of Nvidia chips.
“The query is whether or not Malaysia was a remaining vacation spot or from Malaysia, it went to some other place, which we have no idea for sure at this level,” Shanmugam advised reporters.
Talking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Tuesday, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Malaysia’s minister for funding, commerce and trade mentioned the nation has no info that knowledge heart corporations working in Malaysia are “not utilizing the chips that they’re speculated to be utilizing.”
He mentioned such servers are imported by knowledge heart corporations corresponding to Microsoft, AWS and Google.
Singapore’s Shanmugam had mentioned Nvidia’s chips have been embedded in servers provided by Dell and Supermicro to Singapore-based corporations, earlier than they went to Malaysia. He added that “there might have been false illustration on the ultimate vacation spot of the servers.”
When requested if Malaysia knew the place the servers have been now, Zafrul replied, “we do not know,” including that Malaysian authorities are discussing with the info heart corporations and checking if they’ve gone to the proper events.
“Proper now, there is not any such instances in Malaysia so far, and we’re investigating if they’re. We’ll positively talk about this with Singapore and effectively, the businesses would then need to be held accountable by the related authorities,” he added.
CNA additionally reported two Singaporeans have been charged with felony conspiracy to commit fraud on a provider of servers.
Citing cost sheets, CNA mentioned they allegedly made false representations in 2024 that the objects wouldn’t be transferred to an individual apart from the “licensed final consignee of finish customers.”
The fees additionally come after Reuters reported in late January that the U.S. Commerce Division is wanting into whether or not Chinese language AI startup DeepSeek has been utilizing U.S. chips that aren’t allowed to be shipped to China.
Citing an individual acquainted with the matter, Reuters mentioned “organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations together with Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.”
Zafrul advised CNBC that Malaysia will likely be checking the chips’ vacation spot, however added, “what I can say at the moment [is] the chips aren’t meant to be in Malaysia within the first place. So the query is, why is it going out of Singapore?”
