Chinese buyers are ordering Nvidia's newest AI chips, defying U.S. curbs

Even if Chinese entities acquire Nvidia's latest chips, they might not get enough to build a world-leading AI system

- Raffaele Huang & Liza Lin

Chinese buyers are circumventing U.S. export controls to order Nvidia's latest artificial intelligence chips, illustrating the challenges the Trump administration will face in choking off cutting-edge American technology.

Traders in the country are selling computing systems with Nvidia's Blackwell chips installed by routing them through third parties in nearby regions. Some sellers promise buyers delivery within six weeks.

The transactions are the latest example of how U.S. restrictions barring China from buying high-end AI processors have failed to stop the trade. Since 2022, Washington has imposed export controls to curb China's access to semiconductors for training and powering state-of-the-art AI, but an underground network of brokers has sprung up to get around the controls.

What to do about the gray market activity is a challenge for the Trump administration, which is weighing how to manage the technological rivalry with China.

Beijing is promoting AI development, and the recent frenzy surrounding Chinese AI developer DeepSeek has prompted local companies to deploy the technology more widely.

James Luo, a vendor in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, said he received an order for more than a dozen Blackwell servers from a customer in Shanghai in January. The client deposited around $3 million into an escrow account for the order, according to transaction records and a contract seen by The Wall Street Journal, and Luo said he planned to ship the servers by mid-March.

Chinese resellers including Luo said they used entities registered outside of China to purchase Nvidia servers from companies in places such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan. These companies, which include data-center operators and authorized Nvidia customers, buy the servers for their own use and resell a portion to China, they said.