THE Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) said on Saturday (Feb 1) that Singapore’s customs and law enforcement agencies will continue to work closely with US counterparts on export controls.
This comes as questions were raised over whether DeepSeek gained access to Nvidia chips that were subject to export controls through Singapore intermediaries.
In a statement on Saturday, MTI said it expects US companies, such as Nvidia, to comply with US export controls and local domestic legislation.
“We have always upheld the rule of law, and acted decisively and firmly against individuals and companies that flout the rules,” the ministry said.
Based on the company’s third-quarter earnings, Nvidia booked 22 per cent of its Q3 revenue from customers with Singapore as a billing location.
MTI noted that Nvidia has explained that many US and European companies purchase chips with their Singapore business entities, which would then be destined for US and other Western nations.
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“Nvidia has also stated that there is no reason to believe that DeepSeek obtained any export-controlled products from Singapore,” the ministry said.
At the US Commerce Secretary confirmation hearing on Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s nominee, Howard Lutnick, suggested that DeepSeek found a way to sidestep US export controls to buy Nvidia’s chips.
US Representatives John Moolenaar and Raja Krishnamoorthi have also written to National Security Advisor Mike Waltz that countries such as Singapore should be subject to strict licensing requirements, “absent a willingness to crack down” on shipments to China.
Different Nvidia graphics processing units have been the subject of numerous rounds of export controls by the US government. These semiconductor chips are crucial for the training and operation of artificial intelligence models, such as DeepSeek’s v3 large language model that was released in December 2024.
In a technical report published by DeepSeek, the company claimed that it used a cluster of 2,048 Nvidia H800 chips over about two months to produce the model.
The US government allowed Nvidia to ship H800 chips to China until October 2023.
