{"id":139505,"date":"2025-11-14T13:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T13:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/139505\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T13:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T13:42:09","slug":"chinese-ai-startup-gets-access-to-2300-banned-blackwell-gpus-by-exploiting-cloud-loophole-rents-compute-from-indonesian-firm-with-32-nvidia-gb200-server-racks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/139505\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese AI startup gets access to 2,300 banned Blackwell GPUs by exploiting cloud loophole \u2014 rents compute from Indonesian firm with 32 Nvidia GB200 server racks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though U.S. President Donald Trump says that Nvidia\u2019s latest Blackwell chips will not be sold to China<\/a>, Chinese companies still find ways to legally get access to Nvidia\u2019s latest GPUs. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s a U.S.-based company, it\u2019s not bound by the export restrictions put on foreign corporations as long as it follows U.S. export rules.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From here, an Indonesian telecommunications company, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, acquired 32 Nvidia GB200 server racks from Aivres. With each rack containing 72 Blackwell chips, this amounts to 2,304 GPUs, which is a relatively small amount compared to the massive data centers AI giants like OpenAI and xAI are putting up. Still, this is a massive deal for the Indonesian company, amounting to about $100 million.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

However, Indosat did not buy the GPUs without first securing a customer. According to the WSJ, sources say Aivres found a client for the Indonesian telco first with INF Tech. This startup was founded by Qi Yuan, a Chinese-born American citizen who also heads the AI institute at Fudan University. It was even said that the university had representatives during the negotiations between INF Tech and Indosat, although INF Tech was the signatory in the contract. With the contract signed, Indosat proceeded with the purchase, with the servers being installed at its site in Jakarta as of October 2025.<\/p>\n

Given that Indosat, INF Tech, and even Fudan University aren\u2019t included in the U.S. Entity List, the deal seems to be above board. However, this will definitely raise some eyebrows, especially among those opposed to Chinese companies gaining access to American hardware. After all, they say that even though Chinese companies may not work with the CCP and its military right now, Beijing can compel any corporation \u2014 state-owned or otherwise \u2014 to cooperate with the state. The Biden administration\u2019s AI Diffusion Rule would have prevented this from happening, but President Trump did not implement it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Nvidia has been pushing for more lenient export controls, arguing that the U.S. should allow nations to access its hardware to help maintain its lead. When asked for comment, Nvidia said that its compliance team has evaluated and cleared its partners before receiving their shipments. \u201cWe support the Trump administration\u2019s vision to secure U.S. AI leadership and create American jobs,\u201d said the company\u2019s spokesperson. \u201cThe Biden controls cost taxpayers tens of billions, crippled innovation, and ceded ground to foreign rivals.\u201d<\/p>\n

INF told the Wall Street Journal that it does not do any research with military applications and that it complies with U.S. export controls. The publication also reached out to Indosat, asking whether it had been approached by Chinese customers, to which its chief executive, Vikram Sinha, said it works with multinational companies. \u201cAny customer that is outside Indonesia goes through the same regulation, whether it is a U.S. company or a China company,\u201d says Sinha. \u201cIf it clears all the regulations, we support it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

\"Google\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News<\/a>, or add us as a preferred source<\/a>, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even though U.S. President Donald Trump says that Nvidia\u2019s latest Blackwell chips will not be sold to China,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-139505","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}