Nvidia fallout throws spotlight on Southeast Asia's AI boom

Executives and analysts said Southeast Asia's chip and data centre industries expect greater scrutiny after news of former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's affair with a suspected Chinese spy focused attention on Singapore and Malaysia. US lawmakers are pushing for tougher restrictions on China's access to advanced AI chips, including measures to close a loophole allowing Chinese firms to rent computing power from overseas data centres. New export rules and licensing requirements for Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore are possible, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Malaysia has approved 385.7 billion ringgit ($94.67 billion) of data centre-related investments since 2021, according to its trade ministry. Thailand had 42 data centres, representing 3,400 MW of IT load and about 750 billion baht ($22.58 billion) in investment as of February. Malaysia-based consultancy CEO Gary Goh said new restrictions could cause a short- to medium-term market shock in Malaysia.

Malaysia said Thursday it was weighing a law to monitor data centre operations, including their use of high-performance chips, to ensure chips subject to US restrictions are imported for domestic use rather than re-exported. Singapore said in February 2025 that 22% of Nvidia chip sales were booked to entities with operations there, while 1% physically came to Singapore. Maybank's Jarick Seet said he expected Singapore and the US to tighten rules but did not think this would harm Singapore's and Malaysia's prospects for buying chips.