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THE United States is looking into whether Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek got around US export restrictions by buying Nvidia chips through companies in Singapore, Bloomberg reported on Friday (Jan 31), citing sources.

DeepSeek rose to prominence early this week when it soared to the top of Apple Store’s download charts, and caused a meltdown in US tech stocks.

Its model is said to be able to perform on a par with, or outperform, Open AI and other US AI models.

In 2023, the US put in place a raft of restrictions barring exports of advanced AI chips to China; that round of curbs, aimed at more than 40 countries thought to be able to serve as intermediaries to get chips into China, did not include Singapore.

But the latest restrictions, which were imposed in the final days of former US president Joe Biden’s administration, apply to most countries, including the Republic.