Jitters over ban on Al chip exports

US move aimed at Thailand, Malaysia

- SUCHIT LEESA-NGUANSUK

Thailand's strategic investment in cloud and data centres could be disrupted by US President Donald Trump's plan to restrict shipments of artificial intelligence (AI) chips from Nvidia Corp to Malaysia and Thailand, part of an effort to crack down on suspected semiconductor smuggling to China, say tech and cloud data centre executives.

According to Bloomberg, a draft rule from the US Commerce Department seeks to prevent China, which faces a US ban on sales of Nvidia's advanced Al processors, from obtaining such components through intermediaries in the two Southeast Asian nations, said people familiar with the matter.

The rule has yet to be finalised and could still change, said the sources, who requested anonymity.

Pathom Indarodom, managing director of SVOA, said this move may result in the US slapping export restrictions on Thailand for high-tech equipment, especially Nvidia's flagship graphics processing unit (GPU) chips such as A100, H100 and the latest Blackwell B200.

These chips power Al models globally, from OpenAI and Google to emerging deep tech startups, government agencies and universities, said Mr Pathom.

He said if access to these chips is blocked, Thailand could experience major disruptions, mainly in Al development research and local Al startups, which rely on Nvidia GPUs to train and test models.

This would also affect Thailand's competitiveness at the global level, said Mr Pathom.

Moreover, major Thai cloud providers that utilise Nvidia chips would be impacted as their Alas-a-service offerings would be unable to scale, he said.