Moonshot AI, the Chinese artificial intelligence lab accused by the White House of remotely accessing Nvidia’s advanced chips in East Asia, has also pursued access through European data centers, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke to CNBC.
Four sources said deals were explored this year that would have allowed Moonshot to rent computing capacity from neocloud providers operating Nvidia GPU facilities in Europe. They requested anonymity because the talks involved confidential business information.
Nvidia’s dominance in the market for the world’s most powerful AI processors has made U.S. export controls a central part of Washington’s effort to maintain its lead over China. American companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are competing with Chinese developers, including Moonshot AI, the creator of the Kimi model family, in an increasingly intense race to train and price AI systems.
Three sources said Moonshot was seeking access to clusters powered by Nvidia’s Blackwell systems, among the most advanced chips covered by export restrictions that effectively bar their shipment to China.
In July, the White House said the Chinese AI company had accessed Nvidia Blackwell chips through a facility in Thailand.
U.S. rules limit the export of Nvidia’s most advanced processors to China, yet overseas data centers can provide a route around those restrictions. Existing law does not give regulators broad power to restrict a company’s remote use of such chips through cloud services located outside China.
Moonshot, Nvidia, the White House, the U.S. Department of Commerce, China’s embassy in the U.K. and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to requests for comment.
Chinese AI developers have made significant advances over the past six months. Wider access to Nvidia’s technology could intensify the pressure on their U.S. competitors.
A Chinese AI company seeking Nvidia computing power in Europe would generally rent capacity from a non-Chinese neocloud provider or data center operator that is able to acquire the processors.
Two sources said Moonshot was interested in European clusters for inference, the process of running AI models for end users. One of them also said the company had shown interest in clusters used for training models.
One source said discussions had included potential access to European clusters containing at least 8,000 Blackwell GPUs. The source described Moonshot as “very aggressive” in its efforts to secure additional computing capacity.
Another source said talks over European computing resources began after the White House disclosed Moonshot’s alleged access through Thailand. The company did not comment on that disclosure at the time.
The race for AI computing power
Founded in Beijing in 2023, Moonshot AI has become one of China’s leading AI model developers. In July, the company released a new system that it said had narrowed the performance gap with leading models from Anthropic and OpenAI.
The model quickly gained traction as a lower-cost alternative to U.S. offerings. Chinese AI systems have seen a sharp rise in global adoption in 2026 as their capabilities improve while their prices remain below those of American rivals.
When Moonshot released Kimi K3, the company said demand had exceeded its available capacity. It temporarily stopped accepting new subscriptions so it could prioritize existing users. “We’re adding capacity as fast as we can and will reopen new subscription spots in batches,” the company said in a LinkedIn post.
AI compute leasing has become a rapidly expanding business. Customers, often known as offtakers, typically pay a usage fee along with an upfront amount to reserve capacity. That initial payment is usually calculated as a share of the contract’s total lifetime value.
One source said a proposal would have required Moonshot to pay an upfront premium of 30% to 50% compared with a non-Chinese customer.
Deals involving Chinese customers can generate more cash upfront as neocloud providers and financing companies seek protection against the possibility that Washington could later prohibit remote-access arrangements.
Mounting political scrutiny
U.S. lawmakers have introduced the Remote Access Security Act, or RASA, which would broaden export controls to cover cloud-based access to critical hardware and software. The bill passed the House of Representatives in January but has yet to clear the Senate.
The Financial Times reported Tuesday that Nvidia had told cloud providers offering access to its chips that at least 51% of their services must be sold to non-Chinese customers.
Asked about the report earlier this week, an Nvidia spokesperson said: “America cannot win the AI race unless America’s AI infrastructure wins worldwide — if the world’s clouds rely on foreign-made chips, the model and application layers will be foreign-built as well.”
Nvidia said in August that Washington had approved some sales of its older-generation H200 AI chips. However, the company said “such sales were restricted” by the Chinese government, which has been promoting domestic chipmakers and limiting access to Nvidia processors.
