Singaporean authorities have charged three individuals accused of smuggling computer browsers containing NVIDIA artificial intelligence (AI) chips into China via Malaysia. The accused, including a Chinese national, smuggled the browsers, which are believed to have been used by the firm DeepSeek.
The smuggled browsers, supplied by Dell Technologies and Super Micro Computers, are believed to contain NVIDIA chips that are banned from being exported to China by the United States. All suspects were arrested after Singaporean authorities received information from an anonymous source that the browsers' final destination was not Malaysia as stated in the documents but in fact China.
The government has denied allegations that the chips were smuggled through Malaysia after the United States began investigating the NVIDIA chips that DeepSeek used to train their models in January. The chips had to be smuggled because of technology restrictions imposed by the United States on China to prevent them from being used for military purposes.