Bloomberg reported the change is aimed at giving the chipmaker another way to monitor where its AI accelerators are deployed, as Washington grows increasingly frustrated with restricted hardware finding its way into China through regional smuggling networks. Southeast Asia has become an important transit point for those transactions.
The NCP designation is worth pursuing because it gives cloud providers Nvidia’s public endorsement and preferred access to its sought-after AI chips, putting the company in a position to use those benefits as leverage. Customers seeking the status must now enroll in Fleet Intelligence, according to people familiar with the new requirements. Fleet Management was introduced last December primarily as a data-centre management tool. It gathers information about Nvidia hardware deployed across participating companies’ infrastructure, including the locations of individual accelerators. Nvidia has also developed software-based GPU tracking that uses GPU telemetry and network-latency measurements to estimate where processors are operating; the company described the software as a customer-installed agent for monitoring hardware health, integrity and inventory.
Participation has remained voluntary outside the NCP requirement, and Nvidia does not automatically receive location data from every customer using the software. The company has not clarified whether existing Cloud Partners will have to enrol to retain their designation, or whether the requirement will eventually extend beyond Southeast Asia. Nvidia was not immediately available for comment.
A C4ADS investigation identified several routes used to move restricted processors into China, including purchases through research initiatives, shell companies and shipments routed through other Southeast Asian countries. Examining transactions between 2022 and 2025, the nonprofit identified $13.4 million worth of Nvidia A100, H100 and AD102-series GPUs moving through regional trade routes, and linked $4.6 billion in hardware purchases to Singapore-based Megaspeed International.
Megaspeed has become a particularly awkward case for Nvidia. The company has been under US and Singaporean investigation for more than a year over suspected chip diversion. Last week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang defended his dealings with the firm, describing them as "completely normal" and adding "we've studied all their deployments of our GPUs and counted every one." Megaspeed denied any wrongdoing. In April, the Malaysian landlord of its data centre terminated the contract, reallocating 68.4 megawatts of capacity to another cloud provider.
Megaspeed is not the only example of how difficult it can be to police the movement of AI hardware. Earlier this year, US prosecutors accused people associated with Super Micro of helping divert around $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia-powered servers to China through Southeast Asian intermediaries. The alleged scheme involved falsified paperwork and dummy server shells, with genuine hardware shipped onward after inspections. More recently, Super Micro has faced additional scrutiny over its export compliance after inspections.
Separately, Nvidia has reportedly removed half of the Asian companies on its pre-approved buyer list and told cloud providers to keep at least 51% of their computing services with customers outside China.