The Commerce Department has launched a probe into whether Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek obtained restricted Nvidia chips through Singapore, reports say.

DeepSeek has raised questions about the effectiveness of US chip restrictions that aim to curtail China’s tech development. Now, the White House and the FBI are trying to determine if DeepSeek managed to buy advanced Nvidia chips through middlemen in Singapore to bypass those limits,

China's DeepSeek last week launched a free assistant it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of U.S. models. Within days, it became the most downloaded app in Apple's App Store and stirred concerns about United States' lead in AI,