Moonshot Seeks More Blackwell Chips Amid Export Control Concerns

China-based AI startup Moonshot is reportedly seeking access to more of Nvidia's advanced Blackwell chips, a move that could potentially breach US export restrictions. The company's Kimi K3 model was trained using these chips despite the controls, and it now wants to secure additional Blackwell chips for its next-generation Kimi K4 model.

Moonshot stitched together computing capacity from at least two Chinese cloud providers because no single supplier could provide enough Blackwell chips. The company relies heavily on Nvidia's H20 chips to run Kimi K3, and the large AI servers needed to run frontier models using Chinese chips remain in limited supply.

Last week, a White House official alleged that Moonshot had accessed Nvidia GB300-equipped servers and systems in Thailand to train its AI models despite US export controls. The company developed a sophisticated platform to access US AI models while avoiding detection.