Why Nvidia's Dropped Singapore Revenue Line Is Drawing Scrutiny

Nvidia's geographic revenue table is usually one of the less exciting parts of an earnings report. This year it has become a question. The company stopped listing Singapore as a separate market in its October 2025 quarter, and that change now sits next to a chip-smuggling case involving one of its largest Asian buyers. Nobody has shown the two are connected. But the timing is hard to ignore.

What changed in the numbers

Through the fiscal quarter ending in July 2025, Nvidia broke out revenue across five regions: U.S., Singapore, Taiwan, China and "Other." That quarter, Singapore accounted for $10.2 billion, or 22% of total revenue, and grew 81% year over year. The next report, covering the three months ending in October 2025, showed only four markets. Singapore was gone.

The filing explained the shift. Nvidia moved from grouping revenue by "customer billing location" to "location of the customers' headquarters." That distinction matters a lot for a company whose invoicing and shipping paths don't line up. Earlier reports had said plainly that "customers use Singapore to centralize invoicing while our products are almost always shipped elsewhere." Under the old method, Singapore revenue reflected where invoices were issued. Under the new one, it reflects where the buyer is headquartered, which can point somewhere else entirely.

For anyone modeling Nvidia's exposure to specific markets, that's a meaningful break in the series. A reader comparing pre- and post-change quarters can't simply line up Singapore figures and assume they measure the same thing.

Why the timing draws attention

The context is what makes this more than an accounting footnote. According to the Wall Street Journal, Nvidia added Megaspeed to its internal block list in June 2025, which barred sales to the company. Around the same period, Nvidia stopped reporting Singapore as its own line. Megaspeed, which is based in Singapore, had been one of Nvidia's largest buyers in Asia.

Megaspeed and its Malaysian subsidiary Speedmatric have been suspected of diverting advanced Nvidia chips to China in violation of U.S. export rules. The Information has reported that the two moved at least $7.5 billion in Nvidia chips to China. Megaspeed has denied wrongdoing. Singapore authorities said they examined Megaspeed and former executive Alice Huang beginning in February 2025 and did not find sufficient evidence of espionage, though they barred Huang from re-entering the country. The U.S. is separately investigating Megaspeed over export control violations. Jensen Huang has said there is no evidence of Nvidia chips being smuggled to China.

Nvidia did not respond to Fortune's request for comment, including a question about whether the reporting change was connected to the block list. So the link remains a question, not a finding.

What an accounting expert sees here

Shiva Rajgopal, an accounting and auditing professor at Columbia Business School, put the core problem plainly. Correlation isn't causation, and public information alone can't show why Nvidia changed its format. He did point out that the revision will likely be examined by U.S. agencies looking at Nvidia's export control compliance, since the filings themselves become evidence in any such review.

"The timing is curious," Rajgopal said. "Even if it is not curious, people are going to raise questions given all this information now."

He described the questions an auditor would likely ask: what Nvidia knew about where Megaspeed's chips ended up, how it checked and documented end-use for customers, and whether investors received an accurate picture of smuggling risk in China and Southeast Asia. Those questions go to disclosure quality, not just to whether a reporting change was legal. A change can be fully permitted and still invite a hard look if it reduces visibility into a region that's under scrutiny.

On the disclosure itself, Rajgopal was blunt. "These are just financial statements. Nothing is illegal. It's disclosed." In his view, the filings don't show that Colette Kress, now leading Nvidia on an interim basis after Jensen Huang stepped down as CEO, knew the reporting change was tied to Megaspeed. "I wouldn't say Kress must have known," he said.

The leadership question that comes next

Kress is Nvidia's CFO, and Rajgopal expects her role in past public disclosures to get close attention. But he sees a bigger challenge ahead. Finance executives who take interim chief executive roles at technology companies rarely stay long, he noted, usually because the engineering community doesn't buy in. Nvidia's next phase will depend on articulating a product and technology direction in the mold of what Huang built, which is a different job from running the finance function.

"A CFO running a tech company is not a good idea," Rajgopal said, "especially something that's so deeply tech-heavy."

For developers and technology buyers, the practical takeaway is narrow but useful. Nvidia's regional revenue data is no longer directly comparable across the change, and any analysis of Singapore-linked demand now needs to account for the new headquarters-based method. Whether the Megaspeed matter reshapes how the company discloses export exposure is the open question to watch in upcoming filings, and in whatever findings come out of the existing investigations.