Key points
- Nvidia H200 chips wait in Hong Kong
- Moonshot AI sought Blackwell rentals in Europe
- Nvidia reportedly set a China limit for cloud customers
- Nvidia's forecast assumes no China compute revenue
About 600,000 Nvidia (NVDA) H200 chips are stored in Hong Kong because Beijing hasn't approved large-scale imports, Reuters reported on November 5. The same day, CNBC reported that Moonshot AI, the Chinese lab behind the Kimi models, has sought to rent Nvidia's newer Blackwell chips in Europe.
Washington has licensed the H200 for approved Chinese customers. Blackwell chips fall under US rules that restrict their export or reexport to China. Current law doesn't give regulators broad authority over access to those chips through cloud services hosted overseas, CNBC reported.
| H200 | Blackwell | |
|---|---|---|
| Main barrier | Beijing's import approval | US export controls |
| Latest report | About 600,000 chips stored in Hong Kong | Moonshot talks on clusters of 8,000 or more in Europe |
| Reported server offers in mainland China, end of October | More than 6 million yuan ($900,000) for eight cards | More than 20 million yuan (about $3 million) |
Sources: CNBC for the Moonshot talks, Reuters for everything else. Both server prices are reported offers, not necessarily completed sales. The Blackwell dollar figure is our conversion at the rate Reuters used for the H200 server.
Beijing has let in small batches of H200 chips
Several major Chinese internet companies have each obtained about 10,000 H200 chips in the past few months, Reuters reported. Small quantities have also arrived through intermediaries and indirect routes. Beijing has yet to approve large-volume imports.
The Information reported in July that total approvals could come to fewer than 200,000 chips. The Hong Kong stockpile is more than three times that figure.
The H200 isn't Nvidia's newest AI processor, but it has capabilities that Chinese alternatives have yet to match. An eight-card H200 server was offered for about three times its year-earlier price by the end of October.
Chinese companies have also ordered less powerful hardware. ByteDance, Alibaba (BABA), and Tencent ordered more than 3 million Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 graphics cards, which comply with export rules, Reuters reported last month. The combined sticker price topped $35 billion.
Nvidia, Alibaba, ByteDance, DeepSeek, and Tencent did not respond to Reuters. Neither did China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology or its National Development and Reform Commission.
Moonshot AI discussed renting Blackwell clusters in Europe
Moonshot has discussed deals this year to rent capacity from neoclouds, the cloud companies that specialize in renting out AI chips, at facilities in Europe, CNBC reported. The talks included clusters of 8,000 or more Blackwell GPUs.
Moonshot was interested in clusters for inference, the work of serving AI models to users, and CNBC also reported interest in clusters for training. One proposal had Moonshot paying 30% to 50% more upfront than a non-Chinese customer would. Neoclouds and financing firms can use those richer terms to hedge against a future ban on remote access.
CNBC did not name any neocloud or report a signed deal. Moonshot, Nvidia, the White House, and the Commerce Department did not respond to its requests for comment.
Michael Kratsios, the White House science director, said in July that Moonshot "acquired GB300-equipped servers and has accessed GB300s in Thailand, likely to train its AI models." The GB300 is part of Nvidia's Blackwell generation. China's embassy in Washington rejected the claim.
Moonshot said around the July release of Kimi K3 that demand had stretched its capacity, and it temporarily paused new subscriptions.
Nvidia and Congress are examining overseas chip access
The Financial Times reported on November 3 that Nvidia told cloud providers they must sell at least 51% of their services to non-Chinese customers. Asked about the reports, an Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC that "America cannot win the AI race unless America's AI infrastructure wins worldwide." The spokesperson added that "if the world's clouds rely on foreign-made chips, the model and application layers will be foreign-built as well." That statement did not confirm the 51% figure.
The Remote Access Security Act would extend US export controls to cloud access of critical hardware and software. It passed the House in January but has not passed the Senate. The Commerce Department was reported in August to be drafting its own rule on Chinese remote access to American chips overseas.
Nvidia's forecast assumes no China data center compute revenue
Nvidia reports its fiscal third-quarter results on November 17. Its forecast of $108 billion in revenue, plus or minus 2%, assumes no data center compute revenue from China.
H200 sales to China made up less than 1% of Nvidia's $89 billion in data center revenue in the quarter that ended July 26, the South China Morning Post reported. Nvidia said in August that Washington had licensed some H200 sales but that "such sales were restricted" by the Chinese government.
Nvidia shares were down 4.0% at $192.20 at 9:45 a.m. ET on November 5, from a $200.13 close on November 4.
