Malaysian says its authorities are discussing the issue with the data center companies and checking if the chips have gone to the right parties.

Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz made the pledge as he gave updates on investigations into an alleged fraud case involving servers exported from Singapore that may have contained Nvidia chips.

MALAYSIA: Malaysia denies any knowledge that data centre operators in the country are using unauthorised Nvidia artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Trade Minist

Super Micro Computer (SMCI), and Dell (DELL) shares plunged Monday after Singapore said it’s investigating whether servers shipped to Malaysia containing chips barred from China ended up in the mainland.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang photographed on 2 June 2024.

Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam says Singapore’s investigations were carried out independently and not requested by the US, which had placed export controls on advanced AI chips.

The Graphic Processing Units-as-a-Service AI factory features local hosting, which provides data sovereignty and compliance with data privacy and security regulations.

An anonymous tip-off about computer servers that might contain Nvidia chips being exported to Malaysia, and possibly to an unknown final destination, sparked off a police investigation. This alert did not come from any country or sovereign entity,

On Monday, reports surfaced that Nvidia chips were making their way to customers in China, with the high-end tech circumventing strict US export controls.

Singapore is probing whether Dell Technologies Inc. and Super Micro Computer Inc. servers shipped to Malaysia housed Nvidia Corp. chips barred from China, an investigation that highlights the role of middlemen in funneling high-end semiconductors.

Nvidia’s chips are primarily manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan; however, some systems and computers utilizing these chips are produced in other regions, including Mexico.

On Thursday, Singaporean police arrested three men for allegedly smuggling Nvidia chips, Channel News Asia reported. The men, two Singaporeans and one Chinese citizen, were charged with fraud over a supply of servers.