Overview

• Malaysia’s Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry opened an inquiry after reports that a Chinese company rented 300 servers equipped with Nvidia processors for AI model training
• Four Chinese nationals are alleged to have brought tens of terabytes of data from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur to feed the rented Nvidia-powered servers
• Officials say the investigation is focused solely on potential violations of Malaysian law and does not yet assess compliance with U.S. export controls
• Malaysia’s exemption from U.S. sanctions enables unrestricted imports of advanced GPUs, creating a potential route for companies to circumvent chip restrictions on China
• Trade figures show shipments of Nvidia-powered AI server systems from Taiwan to Malaysia rose to $985 million and $1.874 billion, respectively, after U.S. export controls took effect