MSI: Pallets of GeForce RTX 5090 in China "Unauthorized Parallel Imports"

A picture recently circulated on Reddit showing five pallets of original packaged MSI GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards. The catch: It is said to have originated in China, where Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5090 should not be available at all due to export restrictions. Grey and black market imports are common, but the quantity of new graphics cards in apparently a single delivery was surprising.

MSI prompted the Reddit post to a statement: "MSI has noted recent online rumors regarding the circulation of the GeForce RTX 5090 in China, causing market confusion. MSI clarifies that the GeForce RTX 5090 is neither officially sold nor distributed through authorized channels in China. All locally discovered units do not originate from MSI-authorized distribution channels and have entered the market through unauthorized parallel imports, which are not in line with MSI's official distribution policy."

Export Networks in Asia

An investigation by The New York Times, meanwhile, supports the notion that Chinese companies can apparently obtain high-end hardware on a large scale despite all restrictions. The report focuses on the company Megaspeed, which has purchased current AI accelerator chips from Nvidia worth two billion US dollars.

Megaspeed is officially based in Singapore but has Chinese roots: Chinese cloud gaming provider 7Road spun off the company in 2023. The New York Times has uncovered a suspected network of shell companies with largely empty offices and uses import data to establish connections to other Chinese companies.

According to the report, Megaspeed is said to have bought a large portion of its chips from Aivres, a US subsidiary of the Chinese company Inspur, which is on the US Entity List and allegedly builds supercomputers for the Chinese military. Inspur is therefore officially not allowed to buy chips from Western companies, but the restriction does not apply to Western subsidiaries. Nvidia itself is said to have prepared further shipments for Megaspeed before Megaspeed surprisingly stopped payments.

Another loophole: Megaspeed is said to have sent some chips to Malaysia and Indonesia, where they are allegedly made available to Chinese customers via cloud access in data centers. However, there are also accusations that Megaspeed directly resold AI accelerators to China.

According to several statements, US authorities have already initiated an investigation against Megaspeed, but have not yet reached any conclusions. Nvidia insists it is unaware of any illegal activities.

Nvidia's Huge Revenue in Singapore

Singapore has repeatedly been a focus of potential chip exports to China since 2024. Nvidia books over a fifth of its revenue this year to companies in Singapore because customers there centralize their invoices. In the first half of the year alone, this amounts to almost 20 billion US dollars.

"Over 99 percent of the controlled data center revenue billed to Singapore was for orders from customers based in the United States," Nvidia states in its own financial report.

The cases show how difficult it is for the US to enforce export controls on highly sought-after technologies when high profits are at stake and supply chains are obscured by internationally branched corporate structures.

(mma)