A Singapore court moved hearings for three people accused of smuggling Deepseek's Nvidia chips on August 22. The prosecutor said it would take time to consider responses from international political parties involved in the investigation and wait for a response. Two Singaporeans (41-year-old Woo Guo Zi and 49) are accused of committing fraud alongside the 51-year-old Chinese citizens, according to Reuters. They were allegedly made false statements to suppliers about the final destination of servers and other equipment they purchased in 2023 and 2024.
The trio were arrested earlier this year when Singaporean authorities destroyed a major smuggling ring that allegedly supplied the banned Nvidia GPU to Deepseek. This investigation was triggered by the arrival of Deepseek, an advanced model comparable to the American-made AI LLMS, in late December 2024. The US suspected that Nvidia used AI GPUs, particularly after reporting that Singapore accounted for 28% of its revenue.
Chip smuggling has been underway since Washington announced export controls for its most advanced AI GPUs. Tom's Hardware He has reported on several instances of brave smuggling, with one Chinese businessman even showing off his illegal hauling on social media. For this reason, US representatives are demanding answers from both the US Department of Commerce and private companies like Nvidia. Meanwhile, the AI giant refuses to send GPUs to blacklisted organizations, claiming they are always compliant with export control requirements. Even CEO Jensen Huang says, “There is no evidence of the AI chip conversion.”
Nevertheless, many companies are expected to place billing addresses in Singapore, particularly as the island nation is known to be a business hub in Southeast Asia. Therefore, payments can occur from Singapore, but the ordered items are not necessarily delivered there. This makes it difficult to track the final destination of controlled items, like these advanced servers. So the US has proposed legislation that forces businesses to force high-end gaming and AI GPUs to force tracking technology.
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