A recent Bloomberg report has discovered that a little-known Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company, Shreya Life Sciences, has been transporting our NVIDIA AI chips into Russia. As to where this company was getting said chips from, the report fingers Malaysia as the main source. The analysis data was compiled by trade-tracking firms, ImportGenius and NBD.
“While India is the point of transshipment, trade data suggest that Malaysia is in fact the origin. Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim met with President Vladimir Putin in Russia in September, and hailed the “enormous potential” to enhance regional trade relations, including through advanced technologies.”
The NVIDIA AI chips were allegedly transported via servers known as PowerEdge XE9680, which are made by Dell. These servers contain the coveted, high-end AI chips made by the GPU brand, as well as its rival, AMD. In this case, the specifications data sifted by Bloomberg indicated that 998 of the servers shipped from India to Russia were equipped with NVIDIA’s H100 chips.
“Shipping documents of at least 834 PowerEdge XE9680 units destined for Russia showed their country of origin as Malaysia. Indian import data for March-August 2024 reveals that 1,407 of the same Dell units were imported to India from Malaysia.” Of those 1,407 servers, 1,111 units were exported from India to Russia.
As per US sanctions laws, NVIDIA’s H100 chips and all other AI chips made by the company, are restricted by both its home country and the EU from being shipped out to certain countries such as China and, in this case, Russia. In the case of the latter, the restrictions are done in order to “target sensitive sectors in Russia’s military industry complex”. This, of course, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war with it.
At the time of writing, neither Malaysia’s Investment, Trade and Industry Ministry nor the Prime Minister’s Office have responded to Bloomberg’s request for a comment. Over in India, the Indian government says that it had already looked into the US allegations and has already acted upon it.
(Source Bloomberg)
