A Chinese university with deep ties to the People’s Liberation Army bought two of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips in October despite being on a US export blacklist, Reuters reported on Nov. 11, citing procurement records.
Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, one of China’s “Seven Sons of National Defence”, paid 874,700 yuan (about US$123,000) for two H200 cards for its School of Management, according to an Oct. 21 procurement result. The seller was Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, a little-known domestic supplier, not Nvidia. The university also signed five contracts this year to rent computing power, including two seven-month deals in January for servers with eight H200s each, worth 441,700 and 441,000 yuan, to fine-tune AI models, the Taipei Times reported.
The university has been on the US Entity List since 2001, with restrictions tightened in 2019. Since January Washington has allowed some H200 exports to China case by case, but that route excludes Entity List organisations. Reuters could not determine where the chips came from and found no evidence Nvidia knowingly supplied the university.
A Reuters review of 26 procurement and corporate records from this year found other Chinese universities obtaining restricted Nvidia chips through little-known suppliers. Shenzhen University bought three H100 processors for 769,800 yuan in September, and Beihang University bought four A800s for 489,000 yuan in April.
The report adds to pressure on Nvidia in Washington. Three Republican committee chairs have asked chief executive Jensen Huang for a briefing on Nov. 18, and lawmakers from both parties are pushing for chip-tracking rules.
Source: Reuters, via BNN Bloomberg and BusinessWorld
