Singapore charged a third person for lying to Dell to smuggle Nvidia AI chips
Singapore prosecutors charged one more person with fraud on Thursday for making false representations to US server supplier Dell Technologies, linking her to two other individuals charged with similar offences in February last year.
Jenny Lim was charged with conspiring with Alan Wei Zhaolun and Aaron Woon Guo Jie in 2024 to commit fraud by misleading Dell that Aperia International would be the end-user of the servers bought from Dell, police said in the charge sheets.
Singapore Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said in March last year that authorities ascertained that servers involved in the case may contain Nvidia chips.
The servers were supplied by Dell and artificial intelligence server maker Super Micro Computer to Singapore-based companies, and were then sent on to Malaysia, although it was not clear if Malaysia was their final destination, he said.
The United States banned the export of high-end chips from Nvidia to China in 2022 amid concerns that they could be used for military purposes. The United States later approved the sale of Nvidia's second-most powerful H200 chips in January this year, with some conditions.
In 2024, Singapore was Nvidia's second-biggest market after the United States, accounting for 18% of its total revenue in its latest fiscal year, a February 2025 filing by the chipmaker shows.
But Singapore said last year that only 1% of Nvidia's chips "physically came" to Singapore to be deployed in its data centres.
Nvidia classified revenue by the geographical location of their customers' headquarters in its filing for the 2026 financial year. Sales in the United States, Taiwan and China accounted for 98% of its revenue.
Separately, three people associated with Super Micro, including its co-founder, were charged in the United States in March with helping to smuggle at least $2.5 billion of US AI technology to China, violating export laws.
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