Nvidia has cut by more than half the number of Asian customers cleared to buy its AI chips after introducing a whitelist and stricter compliance checks aimed at preventing the products from reaching China, according to a report on July 13.

The most affected customers were neo-cloud providers, which offer graphics processing unit (GPU)-as-a-service for AI and are among Nvidia’s major hardware buyers.

Nvidia has stepped up due diligence over the past few months in Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan. The report said Nvidia staff were visiting customers’ data centers, verifying contracts, and interviewing end users.

The tighter scrutiny comes as the Trump administration pushes to stop advanced US chips from reaching Chinese entities through third countries.

Singapore has stepped up scrutiny of alleged chip-control circumvention, while Malaysia later introduced a mandatory permit for transshipment of high-performance US-origin AI chips.

🔗 Source: Reuters

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