Malaysia will tighten the flow of sales of server machines containing NVIDIA chips after Singapore detected a case of smuggling them to China through the country. According to a report by the Financial Times, which quoted the Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, the action was taken after Malaysia received pressure from the United States.
For your information, He and Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo have set up a special task force to tighten laws around Malaysia's data centre industry. Every NVIDIA chip sales stream will now be monitored more closely to prevent a repeat of the $390 million (~RM 1.73 billion) browser smuggling incident.
Additionally, three individuals were charged by Singapore earlier this month for their alleged smuggling activities that led to machines with NVIDIA chips falling into the hands of DeepSeek. As Tier 2 countries, Malaysia and Singapore are already subject to a complete ban on access to AI chips by the United States.
Moreover, smuggling incidents into Tier 3 countries such as China, which are completely banned from access, will have a negative impact on Malaysia and Singapore, which have aspirations to become data centres in the Southeast Asian region.
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