A Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company is selling advanced AI technology to Russia.
Shreya Life Sciences is doing lucrative trade with Russia in advanced AI chips. From April to August this year, 1,111 Dell Technologies Inc. servers were reportedly shipped to Russia. This is what Bloomberg News knows after analyzing data from ImportGenius and NBD.
Growing role of India
They are Dell PowerEdge XE9680 servers with high-end H100 AI processors from Nvidia. The total value of the shipments is said to be about $300 million. Nvidia’s servers and high-performance chips are subject to strict export regulations imposed by the U.S. and Europe. For example, sales to China are out of the question, but Russia is not allowed to import Western chips either. The rules are intended to prevent the powerful servers from being used for military applications.
Dell, Nvidia and AMD neatly abide by export rules, but third countries with less affinity for the West try to circumvent them. Trading with Russia, however, is not illegal in India. Shreya Life Sciences imports the servers through Malaysia and then sells them to Russian traders. This is why India has been on the radar of Western governments for some time. Despite attempts to stop exports to Russia, India continues to do so due to geopolitical and economic advantages.
Russia has been denied access to modern Western chips since the invasion of Ukraine. (AI) hardware, however, is relevant to all kinds of research, including military applications. For now, Russia seems to be managing reasonably well to get hold of banned material through roundabout ways anyway.