A small Southeast Asian country constitutes 15% of Nvidia's revenue.

The nation, identified as Singapore, has purchased billions of dollars worth of chips from Nvidia, primarily for data centers and cloud computing. Nvidia's financial report for Q3/2023 submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reveals that around 15% ($2.7 billion) of the company's chip revenue comes from Singapore. This marks a significant increase of over 404% compared to the same period last year, surpassing Nvidia's overall revenue growth of 205.5%.

This substantial chip expenditure positions Singapore as one of Nvidia's major customers for the quarter, ranking just behind the United States (34.77%), Taiwan (23.91%), and China, including Hong Kong (22.24%). Analysts attribute this to Singapore's active construction of data centers and cloud computing facilities. Additionally, the country purchases Nvidia chips for applications in artificial intelligence, computing, and electric vehicles.

According to Jarick Seet, an analyst at Maybank Securities, Singapore's chip acquisition aligns with its focus on building data centers. Sang Shin, former Chief Digital Innovation Officer of Temasek, also emphasizes Singapore's stability, safety, skilled workforce, robust technical infrastructure, and favorable policies for data and digital services as contributing factors.

Nvidia's SEC report indicates that 80% of its revenue in the past quarter comes from the data center segment, serving cloud computing providers and internet enterprises. In contrast, gaming, professional graphics, automotive, and other sectors make up the remaining 20%.

CNBC notes that since January 2022, Singapore has demonstrated ambitions in the data sector by lifting a 2019 ban on land allocation for new data centers. The government has also opened doors for major tech companies from the U.S. and China to participate in domestic market development. As of 2022, Singapore owns over 70 data centers, constituting 60% of Southeast Asia's total data center capacity.

A report from Cushman & Wakefield highlights Singapore as the leading data center market in the Asia-Pacific region, surpassing competitors like Hong Kong, Sydney, Mumbai, and Tokyo. Experts predict a high demand for Singapore's data centers due to rapid developments in digital applications, e-commerce, IoT, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and online gaming.