Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索).
The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier.
The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such as Singapore.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Broadcaster Channel News Asia said it understood the cases were linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia chips from Singapore to be used by DeepSeek, without identifying its source.
Singapore’s government did not immediately respond to e-mail queries on whether the charges were linked to Nvidia and DeepSeek.
Charge sheets accused two Singaporeans, Aaron Woon Guo Jie, 41, and Alan Wei Zhaolun, 49, with criminal conspiracy to commit fraud on a supplier of servers last year.
They did this “by fraudulently making a false representation that the items would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized ultimate consignee of end users,” the court papers added.
The third person charged is Chinese national Li Ming, 51, accused of committing fraud on a supplier of servers in 2023 by saying Singapore-registered company Luxuriate Your Life Pte Ltd would be the end user of the items.
DeepSeek, Nvidia and Luxuriate Your Life did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
If found guilty of the offenses, the men could face penalties of a jail term of up to 20 years, a fine or both.
The police and charge documents did not elaborate on the items involved in the case, or identify the supplier of servers.
Police on Thursday said they had arrested nine people in a joint operation with customs authorities on Wednesday, raiding 22 locations from which they seized documentary and electronic records.
Singapore is Nvidia’s second-biggest market after the US, accounting for 18 percent of its total revenue in its latest fiscal year, a recent filing by the chipmaker shows. However, actual shipments to the Asian trading hub contributed less than 2 percent of total revenue, as customers use it as a center for invoicing sales to other countries.
Last week, Singapore’s minister of foreign affairs vowed to enforce multilateral export control regimes, saying the city state would not tolerate evasion, deception, false declarations or miscounting.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said that its research institute has launched its first advanced artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM) using traditional Chinese, with technology assistance from Nvidia Corp. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), said the LLM, FoxBrain, is expected to improve its data analysis capabilities for smart manufacturing, and electric vehicle and smart city development. An LLM is a type of AI trained on vast amounts of text data and uses deep learning techniques, particularly neural networks, to process and generate language. They are essential for building and improving AI-powered servers. Nvidia provided assistance
DOMESTIC SUPPLY: The probe comes as Donald Trump has called for the repeal of the US$52.7 billion CHIPS and Science Act, which the US Congress passed in 2022 The Office of the US Trade Representative is to hold a hearing tomorrow into older Chinese-made “legacy” semiconductors that could heap more US tariffs on chips from China that power everyday goods from cars to washing machines to telecoms equipment. The probe, which began during former US president Joe Biden’s tenure in December last year, aims to protect US and other semiconductor producers from China’s massive state-driven buildup of domestic chip supply. A 50 percent US tariff on Chinese semiconductors began on Jan. 1. Legacy chips use older manufacturing processes introduced more than a decade ago and are often far simpler than
STILL HOPEFUL: Delayed payment of NT$5.35 billion from an Indian server client sent its earnings plunging last year, but the firm expects a gradual pickup ahead Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s No. 5 PC vendor, yesterday reported an 87 percent slump in net profit for last year, dragged by a massive overdue payment from an Indian cloud service provider. The Indian customer has delayed payment totaling NT$5.35 billion (US$162.7 million), Asustek chief financial officer Nick Wu (吳長榮) told an online earnings conference. Asustek shipped servers to India between April and June last year. The customer told Asustek that it is launching multiple fundraising projects and expected to repay the debt in the short term, Wu said. The Indian customer accounted for less than 10 percent to Asustek’s
Gasoline and diesel prices this week are to decrease NT$0.5 and NT$1 per liter respectively as international crude prices continued to fall last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to decrease to NT$29.2, NT$30.7 and NT$32.7 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, while premium diesel is to cost NT$27.9 per liter at CPC stations and NT$27.7 at Formosa pumps, the companies said in separate statements. Global crude oil prices dropped last week after the eight OPEC+ members said they would
RSS