Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) expects US companies to comply with US export controls and local laws, following questions over the chips used by China’s DeepSeek to produce its AI model.
Markets were rocked this week after DeepSeek claimed its large language model outperforms OpenAI’s but cost a fraction of the price to train. However, questions were soon raised over the provenance of the semiconductors used to build DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model given U.S. restrictions on exporting advanced AI chips in China.
U.S. officials are investigating whether DeepSeek had bought advanced semiconductors from chipmaker Nvidia via third parties in Singapore. A Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC that the chips used by DeepSeek were fully export-compliant.
“We expect US companies, like Nvidia, to comply with US export controls and our domestic legislation. Our customs and law enforcement agencies will continue to work closely with their US counterparts,” MTI said in its statement.
Nvidia’s comments in its third-quarter results published in November also came into play, stating that Singapore accounts for almost 22% of its revenue, but most shipments associated with Singapore revenue were to locations other than Singapore and shipments to Singapore were insignificant.
MTI cited Nvidia’s comments and said there was no reason to believe that DeepSeek had obtained any export-controlled products via Singapore. Singapore is an international business hub, and major US and European companies have significant operations here.
