Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says that there is no evidence of AI chip diversion to countries where the sale of said chips is prohibited, in response to questions at Computex 2025. Huang told Bloomberg that there is no evidence of diversions when it comes to its Grace Blackwell chips. Furthermore, he added that Nvidia’s customers are well aware of the restrictions and that they are careful about it when selling to third parties.
“Governments understand that diversion is not allowed, and there’s no evidence of any AI chip diversion — recognize our data center GPUs are massive; these are massive systems,” Huang said during the surprise questioning. “The Grace Blackwell system is nearly two tons, and so you’re not going to be shipping — you’re not going to be putting that in your pocket or your backpack anytime soon. And so, these systems are fairly easy to keep track of... but the important thing is that the countries and the companies that we sell to recognize that diversion is not allowed, and everybody would like to continue to buy Nvidia technology, and so they very well monitor themselves very carefully and they’re quite careful about that.”
However, this doesn’t seem to be the reality. After all, we’ve already heard of several instances of Nvidia AI GPUs getting past Washington’s sanctions and getting into the hands of Chinese businesses. We’ve even seen one businessman showing off his smuggled H200 GPUs on X. Even as late as March 2025, there have been reports of Chinese entities using corporations registered in neighboring countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, and Taiwan to order these advanced chips and then reroute them to China.
Singapore has already started cracking down on this practice, and the U.S. has also asked Malaysian authorities to keep an eye on this black market and shut it down. However, Malaysian imports of advanced GPUs still surged by over 3,400% in early this year, raising alarm bells.
Huang also said that these servers are massive, weighing several tons, so tracking them shouldn’t be difficult. But the company has also said that these AI chips are impossible to find after they’re sold. That’s why the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that would require companies to enable geo-tracking on high-end gaming and AI GPUs. Furthermore, weight and size are no issues when it comes to smuggling. After all, if stolen cars and SUVs can be smuggled across borders, then GPU servers are fair game as well, especially with the amount of money involved.
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