Moonshot AI, a leading Chinese artificial intelligence lab, has sought to lease computing capacity from data centers in Europe to access Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, according to sources familiar with the matter told CNBC. The pursuit comes as U.S. export controls effectively ban the import of these advanced chips into China, though remote access via overseas cloud services remains a legal loophole.
Sources said the company has discussed renting capacity from neoclouds hosting the hardware, with some talks involving clusters of 8,000 or more Blackwell GPUs. While Moonshot has expressed interest in clusters for training models, sources told CNBC the lab is specifically looking to lease capacity for inference, which involves serving models to end users. One source described the Chinese lab as "very aggressive" in its pursuit of the additional computing power.
This move follows a July statement from the White House alleging that Moonshot had previously accessed Nvidia Blackwell chips via a facility in Thailand. While U.S. export controls restrict the physical shipment of advanced chips to China, regulators currently lack the broad authority to control remote access through overseas cloud services. To bypass these restrictions, Chinese companies typically rent capacity from non-Chinese operators that have legally purchased the hardware.
To secure these arrangements, Moonshot may face higher costs, with one source stating it had been proposed that the company pay 30% to 50% more upfront than a non-Chinese offtaker. Such higher upfront payments allow financing firms and neoclouds to hedge against the risk of future bans on remote access agreements.
The push for foreign compute comes as Chinese developers close the capability gap with American rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. Moonshot's Kimi models have seen significant global uptake due to lower costs and rapid capability gains. The company previously noted that demand for its Kimi K3 model had stretched its capacity, forcing a temporary pause on new subscriptions to prioritize existing members.
Legislative efforts to close the remote access loophole are currently moving through Washington. The Remote Access Security Act (RASA), which would expand export controls to include cloud-based access to critical hardware, has passed the House of Representatives but has not yet passed the Senate. Meanwhile, a Financial Times report indicated that Nvidia has instructed cloud providers to ensure that no more than 49% of their services are sold to Chinese customers.
