Singapore, a hub for billions of dollars' worth of Nvidia sales each year, finds itself increasingly in the crosshairs of Washington's push to stop advanced AI chips from reaching China, as the chipmaker CEO's scandal once again thrusts the city-state into the spotlight.
The Southeast Asian nation said Thursday that it had barred Alice Huang, the businesswoman at the center of a scandal that catalyzed the end of Jensen Huang's run as Nvidia CEO, from re-entering the country.
A fifth person was handed 41 charges on Friday in a Singapore fraud case involving computer servers that might have contained Nvidia chips and were exported to Malaysia. The alleged transactions in the broader case totaled about $390 million, prosecutors said March last year.
The investigations into several companies and key officials, including Megaspeed International, began in February 2025 and remained ongoing as of Thursday.
Authorities have been examining whether servers exported through Singapore to Malaysia without entering the domestic market were subsequently rerouted to another destination, contrary to declarations made in Singapore, the Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement late Thursday.