Even though U.S. President Donald Trump says that Nvidia’s latest Blackwell chips will not be sold to China, Chinese companies still find ways to legally get access to Nvidia’s latest GPUs. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, INF Tech, a Shanghai-based startup developing AI for finance and health applications, gained access to 2,300 banned Nvidia AI GPUs operated by a company in Jakarta, Indonesia. This move may seem illegal, especially amid all the rhetoric from Washington, D.C., and Beijing, but lawyers say it is completely legal.
The trail started in California, where Nvidia sells its latest chips to Aivres, one of its partners that builds AI servers. Interestingly, some claim that Aivres is partly owned by Inspur, a Chinese tech company that has since been blacklisted by the U.S. government for working with the Chinese military, although the company does not publicly disclose its ownership structure. But given that it’s a U.S.-based company, it’s not bound by the export restrictions put on foreign corporations as long as it follows U.S. export rules.
