Megaspeed’s Nvidia imports far exceed usage data, stoking China diversion concerns

Megaspeed has pulled itself into the center of a US government probe after importing billions of dollars’ worth of Nvidia chips that do not appear to match what is running inside its known data centers, according Bloomberg. The Singaporean AI company has managed become the largest Southeast Asian buyer of Nvidia hardware in less than 3 years, which placed it squarely inside Washington’s long-running fight to stop advanced chips from slipping into China. The US is currently investigating centers on whether Megaspeed moved Nvidia chips into China without licenses or whether the company is Chinese in practice despite its Singapore registration. Such findings would breach US curbs designed to limit China’s AI and military capabilities. Singapore police confirmed they are checking for violations of local laws but did not name them. In Malaysia, which hosts most of the company’s operations, a government spokesperson allegedly said compliance monitoring is ongoing. The company rejects the allegations.In a statement, Megaspeed said it operates from Singapore and follows all applicable regulations, including US export controls. An Nvidia spokesperson allegedly said the chipmaker found no evidence of diversion and confirmed the company is fully owned and operated outside China with no Chinese shareholders. The spokesperson added that the services offered fall within permitted cloud activity. The business model involved is a neocloud structure, meaning it rents high-performance hardware for AI work. At many Southeast Asian sites, Megaspeed leases Nvidia capacity to Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant already under US national security review. Megaspeed’s trade records are consistently showing gaps between AI chip imports and deployed hardware From its 2023 launch through November this year, Megaspeed imported at least $4.6 billion in Nvidia hardware, covering 136,000 GPUs, based on Malaysian and Indonesian customs records compiled by Big Trade Data More than half came from Nvidia’s Blackwell line, chips Trump has said he will not approve for export to China even after easing limits on older models. Most Blackwell units arrived over six months ago, with another batch last month. When Nvidia teams visited company data centers, they saw only a few thousand Blackwell GPUs, inventory details shared with US officials show. An Nvidia official said the company also inspected separate warehouses and confirmed the hardware had not gone to China, but declined to say whether the stored totals matched the outstanding volumes. Nvidia said it conducts routine site checks worldwide and stated in mid-November, “Our visits confirmed that the GPUs shipped to Megaspeed by our partners are where they are supposed to be.” A later comment in mid-December said Nvidia had identified “substantially” all products sent and would visit again. The data center footprint Nvidia described to Washington differs from Megaspeed’s own public account of its facilities, and how Megaspeed has privately described its operations. The biggest question is the location of the “specific area” project touted in the investor presentation Megaspeed circulated in 2024. The slide deck, translated from its original Mandarin, said simply: “As of now, the largest NCP (Nvidia Cloud Partner) computing power cluster has been built in a specific area.” But then investigators identified a Chinese company using the same branding and claiming Southeast Asia staff, while posting job ads near the Shanghai site for work on restricted Nvidia GPUs. Naturally, that drew the attention of the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, though as of press time, America has not placed Megaspeed on any trade restriction list or ordered Nvidia to halt business. Malaysia’s investment and trade ministry said there is no clear evidence of violations so far and welcomed additional credible information. Singapore police earlier detained founder Huang Le for questioning and restricted her travel, but she is no longer in custody and is assisting investigators. Megaspeed completed most purchases of Nvidia processors in the six weeks before May 15, 2025, just before a Biden-era permit system for Southeast Asia was set to start and was later scrapped by Trump. Get $50 free to trade crypto when you sign up to Bybit now