Southeast Asia's AI boom faces scrutiny after Nvidia affair

Southeast Asia's chip and data centre industries expect greater scrutiny after former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's affair with a suspected Chinese spy spotlighted Singapore and Malaysia, executives and analysts said. US lawmakers are pushing for tougher restrictions on China's access to advanced AI chips. Washington restricts exports of Nvidia's most advanced AI chips to China, but lawmakers want to close a loophole allowing Chinese firms to rent computing power from overseas data centres remotely. Tougher regulations could include new export rules and licensing requirements for Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore, according to the Wall Street Journal. The alleged spy, Chinese businesswoman Alice Huang, was an executive at Singapore-based cloud firm Megaspeed, which is under investigation for potential false declarations. Malaysia is weighing a law to monitor data centre chip use, while some executives see potential benefits if US restrictions slow domestic data centre growth.