Singapore arrests alleged Nvidia chip smugglers

There’s lots of scrutiny involving China obtaining advanced Nvidia chips despite strict U.S. export controlswith Chinese merchants already reportedly ordering Nvidia’s powerful Blackwell GPUs.

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.

Singapore is investigating whether the servers — made by Dell and Supermicro — contained restricted Nvidia chips and were diverted somewhere other than their official destination of Malaysia, Bloomberg reported.

Nvidia’s latest annual report shows that it does sell to Singapore. The country represented 18% of fiscal year 2025 revenue although actual shipments to Singapore accounted for less than 2% of sales.

Dell told TechCrunch that it has a strict trade compliance program and investigates any customers who don’t comply. Nvidia declined to comment, while Supermicro didn’t immediately respond to a comment request.