Chinese AI start-up Moonshot AI signed a deal in August to rent servers fitted with Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips. The US does not allow these chips to be sold to China without a licence. The deal was revealed in financing documents seen by Bloomberg.
Moonshot, however, disputes that the documents are accurate, and the company said it has no business relationship with the company that owns the servers, and did not take part in or approve the financing.
According to the documents, the deal covers 32 Super Micro servers equipped with Nvidia B300 chips. They are kept in Qingyang, a city in western China that is one of the country’s national computing hubs.
The rental is worth 432m yuan ($64.8m), or about $2m per server. Bloomberg estimates that is roughly 350% more than the going rate in the US. B300 servers already sell at a premium in China.
The servers belong to Lingmeixin, a Beijing company whose website describes it as a distributor of DJI drones. To buy them, it took a 200m yuan ($30m) loan from Beijing Zhongguancun Bank. It used both the servers and its contract with Moonshot as security.
Lingmeixin bought the servers from a company that mainly sells alcoholic drinks, including the Chinese spirit Maotai, and has recently moved into AI. The documents do not show how it got hold of them.
After Bloomberg asked for comment, the records no longer mentioned Moonshot, and the media outlet also could not confirm whether anyone had obtained a US export licence.
Both US companies distanced themselves from the deal. Nvidia said the firms involved are not its customers and do not receive its support. Super Micro, for its part, said it does not do business with them and follows all US export rules.
Moonshot makes the Kimi AI models, and its Kimi K3 model is seen as one of China’s strongest. The company is planning to list in Hong Kong early next year.
The White House has already accused Moonshot of using banned Nvidia chips to train Kimi K3. Meanwhile, Washington has been mapping how China rents the chips it cannot buy, and trying to stop smuggling. Research firm SemiAnalysis estimates that hundreds of thousands of them have already got through.
The report adds to pressure on Nvidia this week. Its chief executive, Jensen Huang, has admitted an affair with a former Megaspeed executive whom US officials suspect of spying for China. Megaspeed is at the centre of a US chip-smuggling probe. Nvidia’s board has opened an independent investigation.