Malaysia Checks Whether Megaspeed Chips Were Sent On
Malaysia is working out whether AI chips imported by a unit of the cloud computing firm Megaspeed left the country again, after a US senator alleged the company may have been used to get around American controls on advanced semiconductors.
The investment, trade and industry ministry said in a statement that Megaspeed's local unit, Speedmatrix, brought in servers and AI chips as a data centre tenant, and that official visits to its facilities were part of routine monitoring of the sector.
And the ministry said it is working with customs to establish whether those chips were exported again and, if they were, whether the shipments followed the law, which since Malaysia introduced controls on US origin AI chips more than a year ago has required a trade permit for sending them on, moving them through the country or holding them in transit.
Megaspeed is based in Singapore and came under scrutiny after reports about ties between Alice Huang, a former executive, and Jensen Huang, who was then chief executive of Nvidia. The United States has alleged Alice Huang spied for China, which China denies, and Megaspeed says on its website that it takes US compliance obligations extremely seriously.
The ministry said it is working closely with authorities in Singapore and the United States and is considering tightening its own controls. "While Malaysia does not enforce unilateral export controls imposed by other countries, all companies operating in Malaysia are expected to take such controls into account in their international business," it said.
But the prime minister's account was narrower. He said Malaysia would cooperate with any investigation, that no request for assistance had arrived from Singapore or the United States, and that there was no indication AI chips linked to Megaspeed had been shipped from Malaysia, the state news agency Bernama reported. "Ours is a trading nation," he said, adding that the rules had to be followed.
Megaspeed did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on the ministry's statement.
The permit rules sit inside a wider set of controls. Washington restricts exports of AI chips to China on national security grounds, Malaysia, now one of the region's larger data centre markets, brought in its own permit rules for US origin chips in the middle of last year and treats false information given to customs about such goods as an offence.
So the factual question now sits with Malaysian customs, which has to establish whether the chips moved out and whether the paperwork that travelled with them was accurate.
Malaysia's trade ministry is checking whether Megaspeed's local unit sent imported AI chips onward
Speedmatrix imported servers and chips as a data centre tenant, the ministry said
Malaysia has required a trade permit for US origin AI chips since the middle of last year
The prime minister said no request for help had arrived from Singapore or the United States
Megaspeed did not respond to a request for comment
Source: Reuters
