Citing people familiar with the matter, reports say about 600,000 Nvidia H200 chips are waiting in Hong Kong for Beijing's approval of large-scale imports. Separately, CNBC reported that Chinese AI start-up Moonshot AI explored renting Nvidia compute from European providers to sidestep US controls.
Analytics Insight and other outlets reported on 5 November, citing people familiar with the matter, that about 600,000 H200 chips are in Hong Kong and Chinese authorities have not cleared large imports. This paper could not independently confirm that Reuters is the original source. Small volumes have entered in recent months, with some large internet firms receiving about 10,000 each, the outlet said.
광고 문의 · 300×250Prices are climbing too. The same report said that by the end of October an eight-card H200 server cost more than 6 million yuan (about 900,000 dollars) on the unofficial market, nearly triple a year earlier, while Blackwell servers cost over 20 million yuan. Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment, and China's industry ministry and planning body reportedly did not reply.
What Beijing is weighing
The report said Chinese officials want firms to use domestic chips for inference and have set their own import limits, balancing more computing power against less reliance on foreign chips. That is the report's characterisation; Beijing's official position could not be confirmed.
On the US side, Washington limited exports of top Nvidia chips and tools to China in 2022 and later, after trade talks, allowed approved Chinese buyers to purchase the H200. Alibaba, ByteDance, DeepSeek and Tencent did not respond right away. The report concluded that the final decision on whether the chips reach China rests with Beijing.
Moonshot AI and Europe's neoclouds
Investing.com, citing CNBC, said Moonshot AI, known for its Kimi models, discussed leasing capacity at European cloud providers hosting 8,000 or more Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, mainly for inference and possibly training. European operators and financiers reportedly floated an upfront premium of 30% to 50% over non-Chinese clients as protection against future rules. This rests on anonymous sources, and whether a deal was signed is unconfirmed.
US rules bar direct shipment of top accelerators to China, but cross-border cloud leasing largely sits outside them, the outlet noted. The House passed the Remote Access Security Act in January to curb foreign cloud access; it awaits the Senate. Earlier Financial Times reporting said Nvidia told cloud partners to give at least 51% of capacity to non-Chinese customers. Moonshot's and Beijing's positions could not be confirmed.