Singapore has become a focal point in the global debate over Nvidia chips and China, as the city-state faces increasing scrutiny from Washington. The U.S. is pushing to prevent advanced AI chips from reaching China, and Singapore's role as a major hub for Nvidia sales has drawn attention. On Thursday, Singapore barred Alice Huang, a businesswoman linked to a scandal that led to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's resignation, from re-entering the country. A fifth person was charged on Friday in a fraud case involving computer servers that may have contained Nvidia chips and were exported to Malaysia, with alleged transactions totaling about $390 million.
The investigations, which began in February 2025, are examining whether servers exported through Singapore to Malaysia were rerouted to another destination without proper declarations. Singapore has faced international scrutiny, particularly from the U.S., over its role as a major billing and potential transit hub for Nvidia chips that U.S. officials say have reached China. The U.S. has imposed export restrictions on Nvidia's most cutting-edge AI chips to China since 2022 to curb Beijing's AI development. Nvidia's revenue linked to Singapore rose to 22% in the fiscal quarter ending July 2025, up from 8% in 2023.
Experts have pointed to gaps in enforcement of U.S. export restrictions and Singapore's corporate system that make it hard to trace where advanced Nvidia chips ultimately end up. Chris McGuire, a senior fellow at Council on Foreign Relations, said that Southeast Asia has become a major hub for chip smuggling and export control circumvention. Singapore has stepped up efforts to police suspected chip diversion since last year, including investigations involving alleged fraud and money laundering. Authorities acknowledged the potential blind spots between trade flows and banking flows, making it challenging to correlate physical shipments with related financial transactions.
Singapore said it had received limited help from U.S. authorities in its yearlong investigation. Police sought information on Super Micro Computer Inc., a U.S. server supplier relevant to the probe, but the company provided limited cooperation. The city-state first raised the issue with U.S. authorities in July 2025 and has repeated its request on several occasions since September last year. Megaspeed International, a data center company, became Nvidia's largest Southeast Asian customer in less than three years and has bought more than $4.8 billion worth of its chips since June 2024, though the company has denied any wrongdoing.