Random Memories from When Nvidia and Singapore Were in a Relationship
Nvidia and Singapore's relationship began in late 2022 and quietly came to an end by 2025 (with Nvidia using some creative accounting tricks). Here are some random memories from the many I documented during their time together on my X feed. For more, just search 'Singapore' in my X timeline.
It was beautiful while it lasted.
***Originally Posted on X on December 12, 2023***
Originally Posted on X on December 18, 2023
***Originally posted on X on May 30, 2024***
***Originally posted on X on January 11, 2025***
***Originally posted on X On February 4, 2025***
Palantir questioning Nvidia’s sales to Singapore?
***Originally posted on X on February 27, 2025***
After some concerns were raised by certain individuals regarding Singapore’s revenue, NVIDIA added a disclaimer for the first time in its Q1 2024 10-Q filing. The disclaimer stated that Singapore is essentially a billing location, and the actual goods were shipped to other countries. Naturally, these concerns have continued to be raised by me and others, and eventually, the “DeepSeek moment” occurred, forcing the officials to investigate these revenues. Since then, everyone has been asking about the Singapore revenue.
As a result, PwC, in a stroke of “brilliance” with Nvidia, came up with a creative solution. In this 10-K, they decided to create their own definition for the SEC’s Regulation S-K and U.S. GAAP requirements regarding revenue associated with geographic areas.
Instead of showing revenue from foreign customers or countries that constitute a significant part of their materials—like every other public company is required to do. They decided to fulfill this requirement by renaming the section from “Revenue” to “Geographic Revenue Based Upon Customer Billing Location.” (!)
Now, how will investors know where the products are actually sold? How will investors understand which geographic locations are at risk due to regulations, wars, or other factors in different countries?
Investors will now have to guess where these customer billing locations are actually tied to and where the products are being shipped.
And if they can’t guess correctly, don’t blame NVIDIA. It’s their [investors] fault for not knowing how to associate the customer billing location with the actual shipping destination.
It’s just amazing.
***Originally posted on X on February 27, 2025***
Out of all NVIDIA subsidiaries as of January 26, 2025, NVIDIA considers three of them significant:
1. Mellanox – Networking Department
2. NVIDIA International, Inc. – NVIDIA as a whole, specifically U.S. operations
3. NVIDIA Singapore Pte Ltd – The King of Billing Location?
Can we understand why Singapore is listed as significant? I'm not aware of any special R&D or operations in the Singapore office, and NVIDIA has never previously mentioned its Singapore subsidiary in such claims.
Why is it listed as a significant subsidiary?
***Originally posted on X on May 29, 2025***
Let me try to break down the "Geographic Revenue Based on Customer Billing Location."
According to Nvidia, revenue from sales to customers outside the U.S. accounts for 53%, while they also claim that 99% of the customers using Singapore for invoicing are U.S.-based customers.
So, if we count the $9B from Singapore as U.S.-based clients — because it’s based on "Customer Billing Location" — that would mean $30B is coming from customers inside the U.S., which equals 68%, not 53%.
So why is Singapore being excluded from the U.S. total?
Is this intentional?
Did I misunderstand something?
Or maybe their lawyers didn’t notice the contradiction?
***Originally posted on X on June 3, 2025***
Nvidia H20, Singapore and Billing Invoices
Looking closely at the disclosure about H20s in Nvidia’s 10-Q, we see that Nvidia reported sales of $4.6 billion worth of H20 units prior to the U.S. government’s ban.
Now, For the entire quarter, revenue from China (including Hong Kong) totaled $5.5 billion. This means that if all H20 sales were billed to Chinese enterprises, only $900 million in revenue would be left for other products and segments — which is not impossible.
Now, where could these H20s have been billed to? Let’s consider Singapore, our usual suspect. In Q4, we saw—for the first time—a decline in billing to Singapore, which ended the quarter with just over $6 billion in total billed revenue. Historically, Singapore’s revenue had been increasing by about $1.5 billion on average each quarter, ever since companies suddenly began billing through Singapore.
Now looking at the revenue jump from Q4 to Q1, there was an unusual increase of $3 billion — a 50% rise — which is $1.5 billion above the average quarterly growth in Singapore’s brief revenue history.
So we can reasonably assume that at least $1 billion worth of H20s were billed to Chinese companies (since only Chinese companies buy H20s) through their subsidiaries in Singapore. My guess would be ByteDance, Tencent, or Alibaba, as they each have reasons to bill through Singapore instead of China.
This just shows how Chinese companies use Singapore as a billing location—both for legitimate and less-than-legitimate purposes—to get their GPUs.
***Originally posted on X on August 28, 2025***
Nvidia’s revenue from Singapore keeps breaking ATH, reaching $10.1B in sales this quarter. It ranks second after the U.S., and just behind Taiwan.
Nvidia’s YTD revenue from Singapore is approaching $20B.
It has become quite popular to buy GPUs from Singapore-based entities since end of 2022. Not sure what happened this year I’ll try to check.
***Originally posted on X on August 28, 2025***
Over $8B worth of GPUs were shipped to SEA countries, which is roughly comparable to Nvidia's revenue from Singapore.
According to Colette, Nvidia's CFO, they were all purchased by U.S. companies.
Oh, and also there is no evidence of smuggling, Jensen said.
O.K.
The End of the Relationship
***Originally posted on X on November 20, 2025***
Nvidia has finally declared victory over chip smuggling — using a truly innovative accounting trick.
This quarter, Singapore — the global rerouting hotspot, the sensitive country that has received a lot of attention and about which Nvidia has been asked repeatedly — suddenly vanishes from Nvidia’s revenue breakdown. Not because shipments stopped, but because Nvidia quietly changed its revenue reporting method again.
Second time in under a year (!!!)
From now on, revenue is counted based on where a company’s headquarters are, not based on the customer’s billing location.
A perfect way to make inconvenient export flows disappear without touching a single supply chain.
I’ve seen plenty of “creative” reporting in tech, but this one is… impressive. Nvidia manages to surprise me every quarter.
There’s a lot more to unpack here, but I’ll leave that for later.
