The United States is considering imposing restrictions on the export of advanced AI chips to Malaysia and Thailand, arguing that the countries are funnelling chips to China, which has long been subject to export restrictions.
Bloomberg reports this based on anonymous sources. The sources report that the US government is working on a plan to limit the export of advanced AI accelerators from manufacturers such as Nvidia. It wants these chips to be exported only to Malaysia and Thailand if the US government issues an export license for them.
Companies headquartered in the United States (US), as well as a limited number of allies, are granted a transition period of several months during which they can continue to ship chips to both countries without requiring an export license.
With the measure, the US aims to prevent China from acquiring advanced data centre chips. Although the export of these chips to China is officially prohibited, suspicions have arisen in the past that Chinese companies may still have access to these chips.
Recently, a US government source told Reuters that the Chinese AI tool DeepSeek has continued to obtain Nvidia chips through companies in Southeast Asia to train its models.