Chinese AI Firm Slips Past US Chip Ban Through European Back Door

A Chinese artificial intelligence firm’s latest attempt to advance its models may involve getting around US restrictions to access data centers in Europe.

Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based tech firm, looked to rent Blackwell Nvidia chips from European data center facilities for its compute, CNBC reported Thursday. The Chinese firm’s effort could test Nvidia’s verbal agreement with its clients to sell the majority of its products to non-Chinese organizations.

The firm requested 8,000 chips and is “very aggressive” in its intent to acquire power for its AI, an anonymous source told CNBC. The company requested the chips remotely from East Asia.

Nvidia chips are subject to U.S. export controls that effectively ban them from shipment to China, according to Commerce Department rules. Overseas cloud services, on the other hand, are not regulated by these rules, giving China an opening to potentially access advanced chips, CNBC reported.

Nvidia and Moonshot AI each did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

“America cannot win the SI [super intelligence] race unless America’s SI infrastructure wins worldwide — if the world’s clouds rely on foreign-made chips, the model and application layers will be foreign-built as well,” an Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement to the DCNF Tuesday, referring to AI by the Trump White House’s preferred moniker.

Moonshot previously pursued a “covert” operation to steal Anthropic’s model data to train its won AI.

“We have information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable for the development of its K3 model,” White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios said in a July 22 X post.

Kratsios also said the Chinese firm used servers in Thailand to obtain the chipmaker’s Blackwell chips in July, according to the official’s X post.