The things people will do for Nvidia’s extremely limited Blackwell chips; besides surrounding tech stores by waiting in line for hours, or behaving in ways that demonstrate why in-person lottery systems are not always the best idea, some are now turning to alleged smuggling.
Earlier this month, three men were arrested by Singaporean authorities for allegedly smuggling a number of Nvidia chips subject to US export restrictions. But this wasn’t necessarily a group of regular consumers falling afoul of the law, but allegedly part of a bigger picture operation, with transactions reportedly totalling $390 million (according to Reuters).
Amid suspicions the servers the group was attempting to transport contained the restricted Blackwell chips, and that their actual final destination was not what they said it was, the men were charged with fraud. Since then, the men—one Chinese national and two Singaporeans—have been granted bail by a Singaporean judge (via TechCrunch).
Prosecutors allege the suspect servers were bought from Dell and Supermicro by Singaporean companies who then moved the hardware to Malaysia. It is not yet clear what the intended final destination for these servers would’ve been.
To briefly recap, the US government’s Biden administration implemented AI chip restrictions that limited the amount that could be exported to a number of overseas destinations. Though Nvidia was not happy about this, the move was in part a bid to further bolster pre-existing export limits placed on China specifically. The hope was to avoid an elaborate game of musical chairs where AI chips would take a circuitous route into China anyway.
The fraud case’s next court hearing has been set for May 2 after prosecutors requested eight weeks to complete their investigation. In the meantime, bail has been set at S$800,000 and S$600,000 for the two Singaporeans.
The Chinese citizen on the other hand is staring down a S$1 million amount, alongside the reported requirement that he wear an electronic monitoring device should he post bail. All three men would also be prohibited from entering border checkpoints or airports, and even discussing the case outside of court proceedings.
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