Singapore authorities have charged three men in connection with the shipment to China of Nvidia GPUs in violation of US export control. Local mediareported that nine people were arrested on Wednesday after Singapore police and customs authorities raided and seized 22 locations. Two Singaporeans were eventually detained and charged for criminal conspiracy to commit fraud against a server supplier. A third Chinese national has also been charged with fraud through false representation.
The alleged crime is importing systems, claiming they are for a company in a certain part of the globe when they will actually be delivered to a different company. If the charges are proven, the accused could face up to 20-years in prison, a fine or both.
Bloomberg reported that, although Singapore appears to ship a lot of chip in Nvidia financial results, GPU shipments in the city state accounted for less one percent of Nvidia’s $35 billion revenue in the third-quarter. On the other hand $350 million in GPUs per quarter is still a large amount. Some suspect that some of these components end up in China.
The US has been concerned about the black and grey market sales to China of GPUs over the last few years. In an effort to stifle Chinese growth, the US has implemented increasingly restrictive export controls on accelerators from Nvidia and AMD, as well as limitations on sales to countries believed to be “evasion routes” in order to indirectly import controlled goods into China.
By 2023, the US had begun restricting AI infrastructure exports to many middle-eastern countries for this reason. Before leaving the White House in 2010, President Joe Biden’s government took steps to limit AI chips sales in many nations. It is unclear whether or not the Trump administration will adopt these rules.
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On more than one occasion, the effectiveness of these controls have been questioned . The US has reportedly increased its enforcement efforts after the release of DeepSeek’s R1 and V3 models. They have also launched an investigation to determine whether the company used restricted GPUs in order to train the model. Local media reported that customs officials are still investigating whether US export controls were violated.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen semiconductors smuggled in recent years. We’ve seen everything from prosthetic baby bumps with Intel inside to GPUs hidden alongside live lobsters.
Nvidia refused to comment on this report. (r)
