DeepSeek GPU smuggling probe shows Nvidia's Singapore GPU sales are 28% of its revenue, but only 1% are delivered to the country: Report

a Chip with the Singaporean flag printed on it
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

A senior government official in Singapore said that only a fraction of Nvidia’s sales in the country actually make it into the country. Bloomberg said that Singapore's Second Minister for Trade and Industry, Tan See Land, made this statement as Washington is investigating whether the firm behind DeepSeek used banned Nvidia GPUs smuggled via the island state.

“The physical delivery of products sold by Nvidia to Singapore represent less than 1% of Nvidia’s overall revenue,” Tan said. He then added, “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.” This is despite reports saying Singapore accounts for nearly 28% of Nvidia’s revenue for 2024.

That means a company based in Singapore could order chips from Nvidia, with their billing address marked as such, but have them delivered to another country. However, Tan said this business strategy isn’t new, with many multinational companies operating across borders doing the same thing, saying that if you’re operating in different countries, it’s sometimes more cost-effective to bill everything using the headquarters address and then have the items shipped directly to where they’re needed.

In fact, Nvidia itself has long said [PDF], "Revenue by geographic area is based upon the billing location of the customer. 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."

However, Singapore is closely tied to China — especially in business. This is especially true in the tech sector, where many Chinese companies have set up key offices on the island. For example, TikTok, which Chinese tech giant ByteDance owns, has its headquarters in the country, and its CEO is also Singaporean. Despite that, the country also considers the U.S. to be a key strategic partner, both in trade and politics, with the two countries’ militaries even allowed to use each other’s facilities on the island and in Guam.

The country has to carefully balance its relationship with China and the United States, especially as the countries are currently engaged in a trade war with various bans and sanctions taking effect in recent years. Singapore likely doesn’t want to be put on Washington’s entity list, especially as it considers itself a business-friendly country, and getting on that list means it will have several limitations put on it, especially in the tech space. Because of this, Tan said that the Singapore government is working closely with U.S. authorities to investigate this discrepancy and that the country does not condone any business using their Singaporean address to get around export controls set by other countries.

Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

  • Gururu
    Yeah, I don't believe for one second that Jensen had any idea who was behind a whopping quarter of their sales...
    Reply
  • Taslios
    ... hmm wouldn't it be crazy if the US banned the export of Nvidia GPUs due to violating export restrictions?

    They came down on DeepCool for selling to Russia through a 3rd party contractor.

    Course that was under a different administration so who knows, but I suspect the US Gov could hit Nvidia with some rather huge penalties as there is absolutely no way they didn't know they were bypassing regulatory bans.
    Reply
  • Pierce2623
    Uhh of course companies in Singapore are doing that. There’s no consequences to them other than possiblylosing access to Nvidia GPUs. Virtually any Asian country that isn’t opposed to China has no risk involved in doing so.
    Reply
  • Shiznizzle
    Per wikipedia Singapore has a pop of just over 6 million. I do, being a ww2 buff and virtual pilot, know that the "country" itself is aboslutely tiny and for it to produce more than 1/4 of Nvidia slaes is beyond funny.

    Jenson knows who bought his chips and seems like does not care where they went as long as sales were good. Not ideal.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    What has this got to do with embargoed shipments? This just means that companies that ordered GPUs had a Singapore address as their billing address, but tells you nothing about the actual delivery destination. Same situation in Europe: you'll find the billing address is in Ireland but the shipments go to the rest of the EU or the UK. It also has nothing to do with 'smuggling', as physical devices would not be shipped to Singapore in the first place.

    If merely having a different billing and shipping address were evidence of sanctions-busting or smuggling, then pretty much every business purchase would qualify, and one could do the same by setting their billing address any anywhere (e.g. CONUS) and shipping elsewhere.
    Reply
  • Shiznizzle
    edzieba said:
    What has this got to do with embargoed shipments? This just means that companies that ordered GPUs had a Singapore address as their billing address, but tells you nothing about the actual delivery destination. Same situation in Europe: you'll find the billing address is in Ireland but the shipments go to the rest of the EU or the UK. It also has nothing to do with 'smuggling', as physical devices would not be shipped to Singapore in the first place.

    If merely having a different billing and shipping address were evidence of sanctions-busting or smuggling, then pretty much every business purchase would qualify, and one could do the same by setting their billing address any anywhere (e.g. CONUS) and shipping elsewhere.
    This is exactly how certain nations are circumventing the rules.

    While Singapore's warehouses may very well buy the cards/chips for other nations they are still responsible for 1/4 of Nvidia sales. You do the math. The numbers are simply too big for me.
    Reply
  • Konomi
    No matter how hard you try, China will find a loophole. Instead it'd be much wiser to focus on things on your own turf and harden your own infrastructure.
    Reply
  • shady28
    Konomi said:
    No matter how hard you try, China will find a loophole. Instead it'd be much wiser to focus on things on your own turf and harden your own infrastructure.

    Nvidia is a US based corporation, its chips are primarily designed in Santa Clara CA, so that is part of our own infrastructure.
    Reply
  • wr3zzz
    edzieba said:
    What has this got to do with embargoed shipments? This just means that companies that ordered GPUs had a Singapore address as their billing address, but tells you nothing about the actual delivery destination. Same situation in Europe: you'll find the billing address is in Ireland but the shipments go to the rest of the EU or the UK. It also has nothing to do with 'smuggling', as physical devices would not be shipped to Singapore in the first place.

    If merely having a different billing and shipping address were evidence of sanctions-busting or smuggling, then pretty much every business purchase would qualify, and one could do the same by setting their billing address any anywhere (e.g. CONUS) and shipping elsewhere.
    ^This. Singapore has low tax and world class infrastructure so a lot of distributors have their global or regional office there. That is where the orders are booked and it's the very definition of a trading hub. Pretty sure only a tiny bit of Walmart's orders got shipped to Arkansas.
    Reply
  • Notton
    Y'all are aware that the Port of Singapore is the world's second largest in total volume of shipments worldwide, right?
    It's second only to the Port of Shanghai, and that only happened within the last decade.
    Reply