Moonshot sought 8,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs in Europe
The Kimi developer explored renting advanced compute from European neoclouds as US export controls block direct Blackwell shipments to China.
Moonshot AI, the Chinese lab behind Kimi, has discussed renting large Nvidia Blackwell clusters from European cloud operators, according to CNBC. One proposed configuration involved at least 8,000 GPUs, while the intended workload was mainly inference with possible use for training.
The talks matter because US export controls prevent Nvidia from shipping Blackwell chips directly to China, yet they do not broadly stop Chinese companies from buying remote access to the same hardware in overseas data centers. CNBC says one potential arrangement would have required Moonshot to pay 30% to 50% more upfront than other customers, reflecting the risk that rules could tighten.
No completed lease has been confirmed. Moonshot, Nvidia, the White House and the US Commerce Department did not comment to CNBC.
The report turns a technical distinction into a policy question: controlling where chips are delivered is not the same as controlling who can use their compute. The Remote Access Security Act, which would extend export-control authority to cloud access, has cleared the House but remains pending in the Senate. For AI labs, the story also shows how access to frontier accelerators is becoming a strategic constraint alongside model quality and capital.
NVIDIA
