Moonshot AI Seeks Nvidia Blackwell Access via European Data Centers to Bypass US Curbs

China's leading artificial intelligence lab Moonshot AI is seeking access to advanced Nvidia chips through data centers located in Europe, aiming to navigate around U.S. export restrictions. According to a CNBC report published Thursday, four people familiar with the matter stated that discussions took place this year regarding Moonshot renting capacity from neocloud providers hosting Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) at European facilities. The sources requested anonymity due to the private nature of the information.

Nvidia's effective monopoly over the most powerful chips has made U.S. export controls a key instrument in Washington's effort to maintain its advantage over China in the AI race. American AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic are engaged in training and pricing battles with Chinese developers, including Moonshot AI, which produces the Kimi family of models. While U.S. law restricts the shipment of Nvidia's most advanced chips to China, remote access via overseas data centers offers a loophole, as current regulations do not grant authorities broad power to control corporate access to these chips through cloud services hosted abroad.

Moonshot was interested in leasing capacity powered by Nvidia's Blackwell systems, which are currently subject to export controls banning their import into China. Two sources indicated that Moonshot focused on clusters for inference—serving models to end users—in Europe, while another source noted interest in training clusters as well. One source described talks about arrangements where Moonshot would rent access to clusters of 8,000 or more Blackwell GPUs hosted in the region, characterizing the Chinese AI lab as "very aggressive" in its pursuit of computing power.