Chinese AI Lab Moonshot Reportedly Sought Nvidia Blackwell Capacity in Europe

Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based developer of the Kimi models, discussed renting computing capacity built on Nvidia's Blackwell chips from neocloud operators in Europe this year, according to a CNBC report published November 5 and citing people familiar with the matter. Moonshot, Nvidia, the White House and the U.S. Commerce Department did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment.

What the sources said

Four people told CNBC that Moonshot held the talks, which began after the White House accused the company in July of reaching Nvidia chips remotely through a facility in Thailand.

• Three sources said Moonshot wanted capacity running Nvidia Blackwell systems
• The discussions covered clusters of 8,000 or more Blackwell GPUs
• Two sources said the interest was mainly in inference, and one said training clusters were also of interest
• One source said Moonshot was proposed to pay 30% to 50% more upfront than a non-Chinese customer would
• One source described the company as "very aggressive" in seeking more computing power

Moonshot said a model released in July narrowed the gap with leading systems from Anthropic and OpenAI. When Kimi K3 launched, it said demand stretched its capacity and it temporarily paused new subscriptions.

Regulatory backdrop

Blackwell chips fall under U.S. export controls that effectively bar their import into China. CNBC reported that current law does not give regulators broad authority over cloud access to the chips from overseas. The Remote Access Security Act, which would extend export controls to cloud-based access, passed the House in January but has not passed the Senate.

The Financial Times reported that Nvidia told cloud providers they must sell at least 51% of their services to non-Chinese customers, CNBC said. An Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC: "America cannot win the AI race unless America's AI infrastructure wins worldwide."

Context

Nvidia said in August that Washington had licensed some H200 sales, but the Chinese government restricted them. The report does not say whether any Moonshot agreement was signed.