Nvidia AI chips reportedly smuggled into China
Financial Times (FT) reported Nvidia's high-performance B200 AI chips are widely available in China through a thriving black market for US chips which are banned for sale in the country.
The newspaper cited dozens of sales contracts, company filings and multiple people with direct knowledge of the illicit deals.
FT noted the B200 processors are widely used by US heavyweights OpenAI, Google and Meta Platforms to train their latest AI systems.
In May, FT explained multiple Chinese distributors were selling B200s to suppliers of data centres for use by domestic AI groups.
The US and China are battling for global dominance across AI and additional technologies, which impacts Nvidia's financial performance.
An Nvidia representative told Mobile World Live 'trying to cobble together data centres from smuggled products is a losing proposition, both technically and economically. Data centres require service and support, which we provide only to authorised Nvidia products.'
Last week Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced it received assurances from US authorities it would be given a licence to resume sales of its H20 chip in China. It was informed of a need for a licence in April due to a perception the chips could be used in a supercomputer in China, which led to Nvidia taking a $5.5 billion hit.
In the three months prior, FT reported Chinese distributors from Guangdong, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces sold the company's B200s and other restricted processors including the H100 and H200.
Source: Mobile World Live
Image Credit: Nvidia
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