Singapore’s GPU Puzzle: 28% of Nvidia Sales, 1% Local Delivery Revealed in DeepSeek Probe

Deepseek claims that they trained their AI with retrograde GPUs has been under scrutiny. Many industry experts were suspicious that the AI startup had access to Nvidia’s high chips (GPUs) for their AI training – despite the US restriction on the shipment of such chips to China.

According to a top Singaporean Government official, only a tiny portion of Nvidia’s GPU sales in the country are actually shipped to it. Most of it is being diverted to other countries.

The statement was made in Washington as part of an investigation into whether Deepseek was using firms in Singapore to smuggle banned GPUs into China for AI development.

“The physical delivery of products sold by Nvidia to Singapore represents less than 1% of Nvidia’s overall revenue.

It is common practice for global entities to centralize the billing for procured goods and services in their hubs, but this is separate from where the products are shipped to so far from our checks.”

Last year, Nvidia made over $7 billion in revenue from sales of GPUs to Singapore. This accounts for 28 percent of its total revenue that year – that’s more than half what Nvidia gets from the US.

Despite the huge sales to Singapore, less than 1 percent of physical product delivery is made to the island country. It sounds like Singapore is being used to “dropshipping” Nvidia’s GPUs to other countries – China especially.

Nvidia had itself said that earnings by geographical locations record the billing location – not the final destination of the purchase order.

“The end customer and shipping location may be different from our customer’s billing location. For example, most shipments associated with Singapore revenue were to locations other than Singapore and shipments to Singapore were insignificant.”

Singapore revenue is up because it’s basically probably being used to siphon GPUs to the data center in China, data centers that may be equally as large as the US counterparts.

Singapore revenue is up because it’s basically probably being used to siphon GPUs to the data center in China, data centers that may be equally as large as the US counterparts.

In order to continue to avoid an unfavorable perception of its dealings with the US, the Singaporean authorities are saying that it is a common business strategy by multinationals with headquarters in the country, using it as a cost-cutting measure. And that shipments are made directly to where they are needed – not to Singapore.

Singapore also maintains some close ties with China and is host to several tech Chinese firms. TikTok for example has its headquarters in the Island country and its CEO is also Singaporean.

The Singapore government has, however, promised to work closely with the US to investigate the discrepancy in GPU purchases and actual physical delivery. Additionally, the country does not condone any business using their Singaporean address to get around export controls set by the US.

From a more practical stance, the US sanctions on the shipment of high-end GPU cards to China, to stifle its AI advancements may be difficult to fully implement. China has several companies and allies it can use to buy AI chips and ship them to China.

See: Why OpenAI’s o3-mini is now Ranking Poorly in the Chatbot Arena? – 11th