By Bing Hong Lok

SINGAPORE, March 3 (Reuters) - Servers used in a fraud

case that Singapore announced last week were supplied by U.S.

firms and may have contained Nvidia's ( NVDA ) advanced chips, a

government minister said on Monday.

Singapore last week charged three men with fraud in a case local

media linked to the movement of Nvidia's ( NVDA ) AI chips from the

city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek.

Broadcaster Channel News Asia said it understood the cases

were linked to the alleged movement of Nvidia ( NVDA ) chips from

Singapore to be used by DeepSeek, without identifying its

source.

Singapore's Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam told

reporters on Monday that the servers involved in the case were

supplied by Dell Technologies ( DELL ) and Super Micro Computer ( SMCI )

before they were sent to Malaysia.

"Whether Malaysia was the final destination ... we do not

know for certain at this point," he said, adding the authorities

were investigating the case independently after an anonymous

tip-off.

He also said Singapore has asked the U.S. authorities if the

servers contained U.S. export control items, and told them it

would work with them in any joint investigation.

The United States is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese

company whose AI model's performance rocked the tech world in

January, has been using U.S. chips that are not allowed to be

shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier.

Reuters also reported last year that Chinese universities and

research institutes obtained Nvidia's ( NVDA ) advanced AI chips embedded

in server products made by Dell, Super Micro and Taiwan's

Gigabyte Technology.