China AI firms still access Nvidia chips, analysts say

Chinese artificial intelligence companies are still using advanced Nvidia chips despite US export controls, analysts told AFP, pointing to smuggling claims and third-country data-centre access as ways restricted computing power can still be used from China.

Washington bans exports of Nvidia's top-end Blackwell and Rubin GPUs to China, citing security concerns and the military uses of advanced AI. It eased controls this year on the less powerful H200 chip, with the United States taking a 25 percent cut of sales.

Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at Omdia, said Chinese vendors are still using cutting-edge Nvidia chips to train models. Stephen Wu, founder of Carthage Capital, said US controls restrict where a chip is shipped, not who uses it, allowing Nvidia GPUs to sit in a third country while a customer in China logs in.

White House adviser Michael Kratsios said this summer that Moonshot AI had accessed high-end Nvidia chips in Thailand. Tech outlet The Information said in December that DeepSeek developed a new model using thousands of chips dismantled overseas and brought into China; Nvidia told The Information it had not seen evidence of such smuggling and called the claim far-fetched.

Analysts said Chinese-made chips are improving, but Nvidia chips still make top-level AI work faster and easier. Huawei said in September that its next-generation AI chip would be ready in the first quarter of 2027, three quarters earlier than planned.