Since the US banned the export of advanced chips to China – including The advanced H100 and those from Nvidia’s new Blackwell series – news is multiplying about how Beijing is finding ways to circumvent these sanctions, i.e. through third countries, smuggling or simply boosting investment in domestic capabilities.
now, The Wall Street Journal says that Chinese programmers have found another way to access these advanced semiconductors.without having to physically bring them into the country.According to the North American newspaper, they – with the help of intermediaries – theTransferring the computing power of these chips abroad, through cloud services.And sometimes hide their identity.
Derek Aw is one of those brokers. Aw found investors in Dubai and the United States who funded the purchase of AI servers using Nvidia H100 chips. Aw loaded more than 300 servers with the chips in a data center in Brisbane, Australia. Three weeks later, the servers were processing AI algorithms for a company in Beijing.
“There is demand. There is profit. It is natural for someone to provide supply,” the businessman told the Wall Street Journal.
Everything suggests that anyone buying and selling processing power this way is doing nothing illegal. The U.S. wants to control exports of advanced chips and other technology, but the rules don’t prevent Chinese companies or their foreign affiliates from accessing North American cloud services that use Nvidia chips.
Anyone who buys and uses this computing power can do so with a high degree of anonymity, and is paid in cryptocurrency.”Since last year, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese customers on our platform. I am often asked if we have Nvidia chips.“He says to the newspaper.
When asked by the Wall Street Journal, Nvidia declined to respond, saying only that it respects North American export rules. The chipmaker reports its quarterly results on Wednesday.
Data released Monday by the Financial Times shows that China’s “big tech” companies are increasingly investing in artificial intelligence, despite US sanctions that, in theory, make access to a key ingredient, advanced chips, more difficult. In the past year, several Chinese tech companies have doubled their investments.
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