Huang scandal puts Nvidia chip loopholes in focus

The unfolding Nvidia saga has intensified scrutiny of the legal means by which top Chinese firms are able to access advanced American compute. While Megaspeed, the Singaporean firm at the center of the scandal, is suspected of smuggling Nvidia chips to China, Washington’s export controls have spawned lucrative opportunities for Asian cloud operators that get their hands on the most advanced Nvidia chips, offering a legal loophole to Chinese hyperscalers. Singapore-based DayOne is worth roughly $15 billion and counts ByteDance as its top customer, while Moonshot has looked to tap Nvidia chips hosted in Europe, highlighting “the nonsensical nature of our export control regime,” a Carnegie Endowment expert said. “No administration has had the cojones to do something about it.”