Export-banned Nvidia chips are behind China’s most powerful AI models—uh oh, Jensen!
New research shows the most advanced AI models from China were trained on banned Nvidia chips.
Recent research suggests that Chinese companies have been able to train their open-weight AI models on Nvidia chips that the US government has banned from export to China. These Blackwell GPUs, which are significantly more powerful than the less restricted H200 chips, have apparently found their way into Chinese frontier labs. The situation has put pressure on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who recently admitted to an affair with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive implicated in smuggling Nvidia chips into China.
Alice Huang is also believed to be a China intelligence service agent. While the CEO's personal affairs have received the most attention, Nvidia's potential corporate liability for export control violations may have influenced its decision to let him go.
To analyze the issue, Will DePue, a former OpenAI researcher, examined the weights of large language models from DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, and Ant Group. He found evidence that models like Moonshot's Kimi K3 and DeepSeek V4 had fingerprints of Blackwell chip training. US technology adviser Michael Kratsios has previously alleged that Moonshot AI used banned Nvidia chips, citing intelligence sources.
Epoch AI estimates that about two million advanced AI chips entered China in 2024 and 2025 via various schemes. However, it's unclear whether these models were trained exclusively on Nvidia chips or if export control laws were violated. The export bans aim to prevent Chinese AI labs from using the most powerful chips.
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