SINGAPORE: Servers used in a fraud case that Singapore announced last week were supplied by U.S. firms and may have contained Nvidia’s advanced chips, a government minister said on Monday.
Three men, including a Chinese national, were charged with fraud last week in Singapore. Domestic media linked the case to the transfer of Nvidia’s AI chips from Singapore to Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek.
“We assessed that the servers may contain Nvidia chips,” Singapore’s Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam told reporters on Monday.
He said the servers involved in the case were supplied by Dell Technologies and Super Micro Computer to Singapore-based companies before they were sent to Malaysia.
“Whether Malaysia was the final destination ... we do not know for certain at this point,” he said, adding that the authorities were investigating the case independently after an anonymous tip-off.
The minister also said Singapore has asked U.S. authorities if the servers contained U.S. export control items and informed them that it would cooperate in any joint investigation.
The United States is investigating whether DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance gained attention in January, has been using U.S. chips that are banned from being shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier.
Reuters also reported last year that Chinese universities and research institutes obtained Nvidia’s advanced AI chips embedded in server products made by Dell, Super Micro, and Taiwan’s Gigabyte Technology.
The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation into 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns about organised AI chip smuggling to China from nations such as Singapore.
Singapore is Nvidia’s second-biggest market after the United States, accounting for 18% of its total revenue in its latest fiscal year, according to Nvidia’s stock exchange filings.
However, actual shipments to the Asian trading hub contributed less than 2% of total revenue, as customers use Singapore primarily for invoicing sales to other countries.
Some Western AI entrepreneurs, such as Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, have claimed that DeepSeek had as many as 50,000 higher-end Nvidia chips that are banned for export to China. However, he has not provided evidence for the allegation or responded to Reuters’ requests for proof.
DeepSeek has not addressed Wang’s claims. The startup has said it used Nvidia’s H800 chips, which it could have legally purchased in 2023, and has disclosed a supercomputing AI cluster of Nvidia A100 chips.
Nvidia, DeepSeek, Super Micro, and Dell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
