Nvidia Chips: The Thai Connection that's Raising Alarms in Washington
A company linked to Thailand's AI ambitions is suspected of facilitating the transfer of Super Micro servers equipped with advanced Nvidia chips to China. According to Bloomberg, OBON Corp. allegedly played a role in a scheme to bypass US restrictions, involving an estimated $2.5bn. Alibaba has been named as one of the end customers, a claim the Chinese group denies.
The case undermines Bangkok's sovereign AI project. OBON, a Thailand-based firm, participated in the launch of Siam AI, which became Nvidia's first official cloud partner in the country. However, Bloomberg asserts that OBON is the "Company-1" mentioned in a US indictment targeting a scheme to divert Super Micro servers to China. US authorities have not, however, publicly charged OBON or Alibaba.
Since 2022, Washington has restricted the export of Nvidia's most advanced chips to China, citing national security concerns. US prosecutors notably accuse a Super Micro co-founder of participating in an arrangement involving a Southeast Asian company and third-party brokers. Some of the servers allegedly ended up at Alibaba, which denies any business relations with the parties involved or any participation in the alleged activities.
The case reignites doubts regarding the effectiveness of US controls and the vigilance of the Nvidia ecosystem. It could also revive calls to tighten chip sales to Southeast Asia. Super Micro maintains it has not been charged and states it is cooperating, while Nvidia reiterates that it requires strict compliance from its partners.
NVIDIA Corporation is the world leader in the design, development, and marketing of programmable graphics processors. The group also develops associated software. Net sales break down by family of products as follows:
- computing and networking solutions (89%): data center platforms and infrastructure, Ethernet interconnect solutions, high-performance computing solutions, platforms and solutions for autonomous and intelligent vehicles, solutions for enterprise artificial intelligence infrastructure, crypto-currency mining processors, embedded computer boards for robotics, teaching, learning and artificial intelligence development, etc.;
- graphics processors (11%): for PCs, game consoles, video game streaming platforms, workstations, etc. (GeForce, NVIDIA RTX, Quadro brands, etc.). The group also offers laptops, desktops, gaming computers, computer peripherals (monitors, mice, joysticks, remote controls, etc.), software for visual and virtual computing, platforms for automotive infotainment systems and cloud collaboration platforms.
Net sales break down by industry between data storage (88.3%), gaming (8.7%), professional visualization (1.4%), automotive (1.3%) and other (0.3%).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: the United States (46.9%), Singapore (18.2%), Taiwan (15.8%), China and Hong Kong (13.1%) and other (6%).
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