Moonshot AI, a Chinese artificial intelligence lab, has reportedly sought access to Nvidia's advanced Blackwell GPUs through European data centers, circumventing U.S. export controls that restrict direct shipments to China. Sources familiar with the matter told CNBC that deals have been discussed this year for Moonshot to rent computing capacity from neoclouds hosting Nvidia GPUs in Europe. The talks involved leasing clusters of 8,000 or more Blackwell GPUs, with Moonshot described as "very aggressive" in its pursuit of more computing power.
The U.S. government has accused Moonshot of previously accessing Nvidia's Blackwell chips via a facility in Thailand, highlighting the loophole of remote access through overseas data centers. Current U.S. export controls do not provide broad authority to regulate access to advanced chips through cloud services hosted outside the country. Moonshot AI, which develops the Kimi family of AI models, has been expanding its capabilities and gaining market share as a cheaper alternative to U.S. offerings like those from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Chinese AI models have seen a surge in global adoption in 2026, driven by capability gains and lower costs. Moonshot AI released a new model in July that it claimed closed the gap with leading U.S. systems. The company temporarily paused new subscriptions due to high demand stretching its capacity. Leasing AI compute is a growing industry, with customers often paying an upfront cost to secure deals.
In Washington, lawmakers have proposed the Remote Access Security Act (RASA) to expand export controls to include cloud-based access of critical hardware and software. The bill passed the House of Representatives in January but has not passed the Senate. Nvidia has also reportedly instructed cloud providers to ensure at least 51% of their services are sold to non-Chinese customers, reflecting the political pressure surrounding AI chip access.