Moonshot AI discussed renting Nvidia Blackwell compute in Europe, with clusters of 8,000-plus GPUs

Chinese artificial intelligence company Moonshot AI is seeking to rent computing power from Nvidia's latest Blackwell chips in Europe. CNBC reported on November 5 that the company discussed this year renting capacity from specialist cloud providers in Europe, including clusters of 8,000 or more Blackwell GPUs. Moonshot AI develops the Kimi family of large language models. The report did not say whether the talks led to a deal.

Export controls do not cover overseas cloud rentals

Current U.S. export controls restrict the export or re-export of Blackwell chips to China, but CNBC noted that existing law does not give regulators broad authority over Chinese companies' access to those chips through cloud services hosted overseas. In other words, a Chinese firm that cannot buy Blackwell chips may still be able to rent their computing power abroad. A bill before Congress, the Remote Access Security Act, would extend export controls to cloud access to critical hardware and software.

Nvidia tightens rules on cloud providers

The Financial Times reported on November 3 that Nvidia has told cloud providers they must sell at least 51 percent of their services to non-Chinese customers. Nvidia reports fiscal third-quarter results on November 17; its revenue forecast of $108 billion, plus or minus 2 percent, assumes no data center compute revenue from China.

Reported on the same day as the H200 stockpile in Hong Kong

On the same day, Reuters reported that about 600,000 Nvidia H200 chips are stockpiled in Hong Kong awaiting shipment to mainland China, with Beijing yet to approve large-volume imports; this site reported that story earlier today. The H200 is not Nvidia's newest chip, but its capabilities remain unmatched by Chinese alternatives. Nvidia shares fell in early trading on November 5, down 4.0 percent at $192.20 by 9:45 a.m. ET, from a $200.13 close on November 4.