Moonshot Rents Nvidia's Top AI Chips in China, Documents Show 1 / 1 Moonshot Rents Nvidia's Top AI Chips in China, Documents Show An Nvidia HGX B300. Andy Lin Updated Tue, November 10, 2026 at 5:08 AM EST 6 min read NVDA +1.52% SMCI +1.43% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
(Bloomberg) -- Moonshot AI accessed a trove of Nvidia Corp.'s most advanced chips this summer, according to documents filed with Beijing regulators, highlighting the Chinese artificial intelligence champion's reliance on American hardware despite US export restrictions.
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The firm behind one of China's most advanced AI models signed a contract in August to rent 32 Super Micro Computer Inc. (SMCI) servers equipped with Nvidia's (NVDA) B300 GPUs, the most powerful AI accelerators on the market, documents reviewed by Bloomberg News show.
The online filings valued the servers at 432 million yuan ($64.8 million) and said they were located in China, indicating a possible breach of US rules that forbid sales to the country without an explicit license. Bloomberg News was unable to determine whether a license was obtained. Moonshot disputed the accuracy of the documents. After Bloomberg News contacted the company for comment, there were no longer references to Moonshot in the documents.
Go deeper with AlphaSpace 178.67 -7.97 (-4.27%) At close: November 9 at 4:00:00 PM EST 181.39 +2.71 (+1.52%) Pre-Market: 5:25:25 AM EST The US has accused Moonshot of training some of China's most cutting-edge frontier models with restricted Blackwell chips. Bloomberg News reported in July that the firm has a channel for accessing the processors. As it heads towards a debut in Hong Kong early next year, the company is developing the follow-up to its groundbreaking Kimi K3 model, which ranked near world-leading offerings from Anthropic PBC and OpenAI, recently unveiling the model's first major upgrade.
Washington has for years sought to restrict sales of Nvidia's most advanced AI chips to Chinese companies and moved to dismantle a smuggling ring it alleges has funneled billions of dollars worth of Nvidia hardware into the country. Following the release of Kimi K3 over the summer, a White House official said the startup had accessed restricted Nvidia hardware.
The original documents reviewed by Bloomberg News, which have not been previously reported, consist of two financing contracts signed on Aug. 4 by Lingmeixin (Beijing) Technology Co., the owner of the servers, and Beijing Zhongguancun Bank Co., the financier of the purchase.
Chinese companies are legally required to provide certain details of financing contracts to a database maintained by the credit agency of the People's Bank of China. Beijing Zhongguancun Bank submitted the documents to the database on Aug. 6, two days after the contracts were signed. However, after Bloomberg News submitted requests for comment to Moonshot, Lingmeixin and Beijing Zhongguancun Bank on Nov. 3, documents available on the database no longer included any mention of Moonshot.
"We currently have no business relationship with Lingmeixin," a Moonshot spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "We neither participated in nor authorized the related financing or guarantee arrangements, and had no knowledge of them."
Nvidia has faced criticism it hasn't done enough to stop shipments of its high-end semiconductors from illegally reaching Chinese companies. This week, the issue resurfaced after founder Jensen Huang admitted to an affair with the founder of Megaspeed, identified in several reports as a suspected Chinese spy. The firm she established is at the center of a US probe into chip smuggling.
An Nvidia spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the entities involved in the August purchase "are not Nvidia customers," adding that "we do not provide replacement products, service, or support to them." A spokesperson for Super Micro said the company "does not conduct business with these entities," and that it is "committed to complying with all applicable US export and re-export control laws and regulations."
Under the two agreements reviewed by Bloomberg News, Lingmeixin provided dual collateral for a 200 million yuan ($30 million) loan for the server purchase from Beijing Zhongguancun Bank. The physical collateral consisted of the servers and the financial collateral was earnings of 345.6 million yuan derived from a service contract signed with Beijing Dark Side of the Moon Technology Co., Moonshot's main entity. Lingmeixin and Beijing Zhongguancun Bank didn't respond to requests for comment.
Dual collateral financing arrangements have become popular among AI data center developers, supplementing fast depreciating GPUs with stable cash flows from service contracts. CoreWeave Inc. raised $8.5 billion secured by AI chips as well as contracts with customers including Meta Platforms Inc., Bloomberg News reported in March.
The contracts implied each server was worth 13.5 million yuan ($2 million), about a 350% markup from the going rate in the US. The exorbitant premium likely hints at a black market where tight demand is hardly satisfied by limited supply under the US export controls regime. Research firm SemiAnalysis has estimated that hundreds of thousands of AI chips have slipped into China, citing supply-chain checks and comparisons of production and installation data. Bloomberg News has also reported extensively about the practice.
In a statement attached to the contracts, Lingmeixin said the hardware purchased with the financing was designated for fulfilling a service contract with Moonshot, and "Moonshot AI only has right to use the compute service, with no ownership of the equipment."
According to its website, Lingmeixin is a drone distributor selling DJI products and other related equipment. It lists partners including China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) and China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), both heavily involved in China's missile program and grappling with multiple restrictions under US export controls and financial sanctions.
The contracts specified that Lingmeixin purchased the servers from a recently established subsidiary of Beijing Chunju Technology Co. The documents didn't specify how Beijing Chunju Technology obtained the Super Micro servers nor how much was paid for the hardware.
Beijing Chunju Technology runs an e-commerce business selling alcoholic drinks including the Maotai liquor, and has expanded into AI business, according to its mid-year earnings report. The company didn't respond to a request for comment.
Beijing Zhongguancun Bank, the financier of the server purchase, was founded by 11 publicly-traded companies in 2017 with a focus on financing tech innovation, according to its website. Zhongguancun is a major technology hub in Beijing, sometimes referred to as China's Silicon Valley.
The servers are stored in China's western city of Qingyang, according to the contracts. On the edge of the country's western desert, the city is one of eight designated national computing hubs, benefiting from proximity to rich green energy.
China is relocating computing power away from its crowded eastern megacities and out to its western regions, where both space and inexpensive green energy are abundant. Thanks to this effort, Gansu and Inner Mongolia are expected to become top computing hubs by 2028, according to BloombergNEF. The country is projected to double its data center capacity in the next five years.
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