Nvidia is reportedly developing software capable of monitoring the geographic location of its AI chips, a move that comes amid increasing reports of these chips being illegally transported into China. According to sources, the company has created location verification technology designed to identify the country where a specific chip is operating. This software primarily monitors computing performance, but it can also infer a chip's location by analyzing communication delays between servers.

The software will be offered as an optional feature for customers and is expected to debut with Nvidia's Blackwell chips. This development follows several recent claims that China's DeepSeek AI models were trained using smuggled Nvidia Blackwell chips. In response, Nvidia stated it has not encountered any evidence supporting such smuggling activities, noting, "We haven’t seen any substantiation or received tips of 'phantom data centers' constructed to deceive us and our OEM partners, then deconstructed, smuggled, and reconstructed somewhere else."

This news emerges shortly after Nvidia received U.S. government approval to begin selling its H200 AI chips to authorized customers in China. It is important to clarify that this authorization applies only to the older H200 chips and does not extend to the newer Blackwell models.