Shanghai | Data centre operators across South-East Asia are bracing for a US crackdown on the flow of advanced Nvidia chips to Chinese technology giants, as the scandal engulfing outgoing chief executive Jensen Huang threatens to dismantle one of the most lucrative back doors in the global artificial intelligence industry.

For years, a sprawling network of data centres and specialist cloud computing companies has profited from Washington’s patchy enforcement of export controls, allowing Chinese hyperscalers including Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance to access American computing power without importing the chips into China.