Moonshot AI accessed Nvidia chips despite US export ban, White House official says

The US spent years building a wall around its most advanced AI chips. A Beijing-based startup apparently found a door. Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, accused Chinese AI company Moonshot AI of acquiring Nvidia’s GB300 chips to train its latest model, in direct violation of US export controls. The accusation, made on July 22, 2026, came just days after Moonshot launched Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter AI system that quickly turned heads for both its performance and its price. Nvidia’s stock didn’t take the news well. Shares dropped sharply as investors processed the implications. How the chips allegedly got through According to the allegations, Moonshot didn’t smuggle chips into China. Instead, the company reportedly secured GB300-equipped servers through infrastructure located in Thailand. That allowed Moonshot’s engineers to train their AI models on the most advanced Nvidia hardware without ever importing the physical chips into Chinese territory. The GB300 belongs to Nvidia’s Blackwell generation of chips, the most advanced variants of which have been restricted from export to Chinese entities for several years. Moonshot AI...