Malaysia GPU imports jump 3,400 percent amid stockpiling and trans-shipment scrutiny

Malaysia imported GPUs worth $2.74 billion in April 2025, a 3,400 percent leap from the same month two years earlier. The figure sets a new monthly record and lifts the January-to-April total to $6.45 billion—already 32 percent above the whole of 2024.

Monthly totals climbed from $1.12 billion in January (a 700 percent year-over-year increase) to $627 million in February, $1.96 billion in March, and then $2.74 billion in April (each a 3,400 percent rise from 2023).

Most shipments originate from Nvidia. On a revenue basis, the April quarter’s Malaysian imports—about $5.33 billion—represent roughly 13 percent of Nvidia’s $43 billion first-quarter sales. That share would normally trigger separate country disclosure under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules, yet Nvidia’s new “geographic revenue based on customer billing location” metric masks the physical destination of goods.

Regulators and industry analysts are therefore questioning whether Malaysia is stockpiling accelerators for its domestic cloud industry or serving as a trans-shipment node for buyers in mainland China seeking to bypass tightened U.S. export controls. The forthcoming AI Diffusion Rule, effective 15 May 2025, may intensify that scrutiny.

With no public data on the GPUs’ final destinations, Malaysia’s sudden prominence highlights both the opacity of supply-chain reporting and the geopolitical gray zones that accompany the AI hardware boom.