Chinese AI lab Moonshot has sought access to Nvidia's Blackwell chips through data centers in Europe, sources told CNBC. The push follows a White House accusation that it reached the chips through a facility in Thailand. U.S. export controls ban the chips' import into China, but remote access through overseas clouds remains a loophole.
Moonshot AI has sought access to Nvidia chips through data centers in Europe, sources told CNBC. The White House had already accused the Chinese lab of accessing Nvidia's advanced chips remotely in East Asia.
Four people familiar with the matter said deals were discussed this year for Moonshot to rent capacity from neoclouds hosting Nvidia GPUs in Europe. Three of the sources said Moonshot was looking to lease capacity powered by Blackwell systems, which are subject to export controls that effectively ban their import into China.
Talks over large Blackwell clusters
One source said talks have taken place for Moonshot to rent clusters of 8,000 or more Blackwell GPUs in the region. Two sources said the lab was interested in clusters for inference, and one said it was also aware of interest in clusters for training.
Pricing came up as well: one source said it had been proposed that Moonshot pay 30% to 50% more upfront than a non-Chinese offtaker would. Arrangements with Chinese customers can be more lucrative upfront, as neoclouds and financing firms look to hedge against a potential future ban of remote access agreements.
Washington weighs remote access
In July, the White House said Moonshot had accessed Blackwell chips via a facility in Thailand. Current law does not give regulators broad authority to control access to the chips through cloud services hosted overseas.
Lawmakers have proposed the Remote Access Security Act, which would expand export controls to cover cloud-based access. It passed the House of Representatives in January but has not passed the Senate.
Separately, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Nvidia told cloud providers selling access to its chips that they must sell at least 51% of services to non-Chinese customers. Moonshot, Nvidia, the White House and the U.S. Department of Commerce did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment.
Source: CNBC
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