Moonshot AI sought access to Nvidia Blackwell chips in Europe — CNBC
Chinese artificial intelligence laboratory Moonshot AI discussed renting computing capacity at European data centers equipped with Nvidia Blackwell graphics processing units. CNBC reports, citing four people familiar with the course of the negotiations. According to them, the company considered deals with neocloud operators — cloud platforms that provide access to computing infrastructure.
Negotiations over large clusters
Three CNBC sources said Moonshot sought to rent capacity based on Nvidia Blackwell systems. U.S. export controls effectively prohibit the import of such advanced chips into China, but current rules do not give U.S. regulators broad authority to control remote access to equipment through data centers outside the country.
Two people said the company was interested in clusters for inference — providing finished models to end users. One source was also aware of Moonshot's interest in capacity for training models. According to CNBC, arrangements were discussed for access to clusters with 8,000 or more Blackwell GPUs in Europe.
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U.S. restrictions and demand for capacity
In July, the White House said that Moonshot had obtained remote access to Blackwell chips through a facility in Thailand. According to one CNBC source, talks on European computing capacity took place after that statement. Moonshot did not comment on the report at the time.
Moonshot AI was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in Beijing. The company develops the Kimi family of models. In July, Moonshot unveiled the Kimi K3 model and said it had narrowed the gap with the leading systems of Anthropic and OpenAI. Around the same time, the company temporarily suspended new subscriptions to prioritize computing resources for serving existing users.
Moonshot AI, Nvidia, the White House, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Chinese embassy in the United Kingdom, and China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment. A bill proposed in the U.S. Congress, the Remote Access Security Act, would extend export controls to cloud access to critical equipment and software. The House of Representatives approved it in January, but the Senate did not pass the document.
