Nandini Roy Choudhury, writer
Brief news
- Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) expects American firms, including Nvidia, to comply with U.S. export regulations amid concerns over DeepSeek’s AI model and its semiconductor sourcing.
- DeepSeek claims its language model outperforms OpenAI’s at a lower cost, raising questions about the legality of the advanced chips used, particularly in light of U.S. restrictions on sales to China.
- Nvidia confirmed that DeepSeek’s processors comply with export laws, while MTI emphasized ongoing collaboration with U.S. authorities to uphold legal standards in semiconductor transactions.
Detailed news
On Saturday, Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) released a statement saying that it anticipates that American firms will observe U.S. export rules and local legislation. This remark was made in response to inquiries about the chips that China’s DeepSeek used to create its AI model.
DeepSeek’s assertion that its huge language model is superior than OpenAI’s and can be trained at a tenth of the cost sent shockwaves through the markets this week. However, because to the limits imposed by the United States on the sale of advanced artificial intelligence processors to China, questions were soon raised about the origin of the semiconductors that were used to construct DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that U.S. investigators were looking into whether DeepSeek had purchased advanced semiconductors from the chipmaker Nvidia through third parties in Singapore.
On Monday, a spokeswoman for Nvidia informed CNBC that the processors that DeepSeek uses are completely compliant with export regulations. When CNBC reached out to DeepSeek, they were not available to provide a comment right away.
“We anticipate that American companies, such as Nvidia, would adhere to US export rules and our domestic laws. According to MTI’s statement, “Our customs and law enforcement agencies will continue to work closely with their US counterparts.”
“We have consistently upheld the rule of law and have taken decisive and firm action against individuals and companies that violate the rules.”
Nvidia stated in its third-quarter results, which were published in November, that Singapore contributes for over 22% of its sales. However, the company also acknowledged that “most shipments associated with Singapore revenue were to locations other than Singapore and shipments to Singapore were insignificant.”
In its statement on Saturday, MTI referred to statements made by Nvidia, which stated that there was no cause to suspect that DeepSeek had acquired any export-controlled products through Singapore.
Singapore is a center for international business. There are many large firms from the United States and Europe that have a strong presence here. According to MTI, Nvidia has stated that a large number of these clients buy chips for products that are intended for the United States and other Western nations by using their company entities in Singapore.
Source : CNBC news
