Chinese Documents Reveal $64.8M Deployment of Advanced Nvidia B300 Chips
Newly discovered documents reveal a $64.8 million deal that brought 32 servers equipped with advanced Nvidia B300 chips to China, exposing persistent gaps in U.S. export controls.
Despite years of strict U.S. export controls, newly surfaced Chinese documents reveal a $64.8 million transaction involving the deployment of 32 servers equipped with advanced Nvidia B300 artificial intelligence chips inside China. The findings, reported by Bloomberg, provide unprecedented documentary evidence detailing how Chinese entities bypass trade restrictions to secure cutting-edge American hardware.
The documents, comprising two financing agreements dated August, outline the exact specifications, valuation, physical location, and entities involved in the transaction. According to the paperwork, the servers are housed in Qingyang, a city in western China, rather than a third-party data center. Each server was valued at approximately $2 million, representing a 350% markup over U.S. market prices and highlighting the lucrative underground economy driven by supply constraints.
Complex Supply Chain and Corporate Network
The transaction involved an intricate web of companies. A Chinese drone-marketing firm, Lingmeixin, purchased the servers from a subsidiary of a business primarily dealing in alcoholic beverages, with funding secured through a Chinese bank. Moonshot AI, a prominent Chinese artificial intelligence developer behind the Kimi model, was slated to lease the computing power without taking direct ownership of the hardware.
Following media inquiries sent to Moonshot and other firms involved, references to Moonshot mysteriously vanished from the government database where the documents were hosted. Moonshot denied any connection to the financing arrangements, claiming no prior knowledge of the deals.
Broad Enforcement Challenges
The revelation underscores the persistent difficulty of enforcing export controls on high-performance technology. While the U.S. Department of Commerce continues investigating potential smuggling networks—including a separate Singapore-linked Megaspeed probe recently referred to the Ministry of Justice—Nvidia and Supermicro both stated they do not conduct business with the entities named in the newly disclosed documents, leaving the exact transit route of the hardware shrouded in mystery.
