KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 10): A little-known firm called Megaspeed, which set up a unit in Malaysia to buy nearly US$2 billion (RM8.4 billion) worth of Nvidia chips, is now under investigations by US and Singapore, according to the New York Times.

In a massive 2,500-word article published on Friday, the American newspaper alleged that the Singapore-based company funnelled the chips to data centres in Malaysia and Indonesia that appear to remotely serve customers in China. Such shipments violate US laws if done on behalf of a Chinese company.

US officials have communicated their concerns about Megaspeed to Singaporean and Malaysian authorities as well as Nvidia, according to three unidentified people cited by the Times.

The Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry told the Times that the country had recently strengthened its oversight of the export of artificial intelligence (AI) chips and that it maintained an active dialogue with the US about its controls.

Malaysia has been working on tightening its regulations on shipments of semiconductors under American pressure to prevent flow of advanced chips to China in violation of US export rules.

In July, the government announced that exports, transshipments and transits of high-performance AI chips of US origin would require a trade permit effective immediately.

However, Megaspeed’s Malaysian subsidiary Speedmatrix Sdn Bhd had received more than 200 shipments between June 2024 and June 2025 of restricted Nvidia technology barred from being sent to China, the Times reported, citing trade records.

The bulk of imports were purchased from what appears to be the subsidiary of Inspur, a Chinese firm that the US has identified for attempting to acquire American technology to build supercomputers for the Chinese military, the records reviewed by the Times showed. Nvidia is prohibited from selling their technology to Inspur without a special licence.

The Times said a US official with a department that oversees export controls visited Megaspeed’s data centre in Malaysia in September of 2024 to investigate suspicions about how much it was buying.

Officials were concerned that Nvidia technology on site was still in boxes, which was suspicious because some companies bypass checks by showing they have the technology before later shipping it elsewhere, the Times noted.

Reporters of the Times also tracked business listings that led to the Malaysian data centre in the Sedenak Tech Park in Johor, as well as an office on the upper floors of a shopping mall also in Johor.

When a Times reporter visited the office, the employees inside did not answer. A woman who emerged for lunch and identified herself as an administrator reportedly said she had no contact with her bosses and replied “it’s not clear” when asked by the reporter what the company did.