New turn in Moonshot access to Blackwell chips in Europe

In July, the White House told that Moonshot AI, a Chinese AI lab, used Nvidia Blackwell chips through a site in Thailand. US export rules stop the sale of these chips to China.

CNBC reports that Moonshot AI, a Chinese AI lab, tried to get access to Nvidia Blackwell chips through data centers in Europe. The lab makes the Kimi models, and four sources say that it had talks this year with neoclouds, which rent out AI chips. Moonshot, Nvidia and the White House gave no comment on the report.

How it works

A Chinese company gets capacity from a neocloud or data center operator that is not Chinese and can get Blackwell chips. Two sources say that Moonshot wanted clusters to operate its models for users. One source knew that Moonshot also wanted clusters for model training.

The numbers

One source says that the talks included clusters of 8,000 or more Blackwell chips. One source says that the proposal was for Moonshot to pay 30% to 50% more upfront than a customer that is not Chinese. The Financial Times says that Nvidia told cloud providers that 51% or more of cloud services must go to customers that are not Chinese.

What is not known

No source says that the parties made a contract. US law gives regulators no full control of cloud access from overseas. The US House of Representatives gave a yes vote to the Remote Access Security Act in January, but the Senate did not.

Insight: Sellers put a price on a weak point in the chip rules

US export rules stop the sale of Blackwell chips to China. US law does not include cloud access from overseas. A source says that the proposal is for Moonshot to pay 30% to 50% more upfront, and neoclouds want protection from a ban that can come. This seems to be a price on a hole in the law, and the Senate vote on the bill can close it. Buyers must prepare.