---
title: "Moonshot AI reportedly used smuggled Nvidia chips for Kimi K3"
url: https://www.parallelquant.com/posts/moonshot-ai-reportedly-used-smuggled-nvidia-chips-for-kimi-k3-10e1f2
source_name: "Tom's Hardware"
source_url: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/chinas-moonshot-ai-reportedly-used-nvidia-blackwell-chips-for-training-kimi-k3-company-circumvented-both-u-s-export-and-chinese-import-controls-to-acquire-compute
published: 2026-07-29T10:00:00.000Z
topics: ["chips", "policy"]
publisher: "Parallel Quant"
---

# Moonshot AI reportedly used smuggled Nvidia chips for Kimi K3

*2026-07-29 · Source: [Tom's Hardware](https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/chinas-moonshot-ai-reportedly-used-nvidia-blackwell-chips-for-training-kimi-k3-company-circumvented-both-u-s-export-and-chinese-import-controls-to-acquire-compute)*

Tom's Hardware reports that China's Moonshot AI used Nvidia Blackwell chips to train its Kimi K3 model, allegedly circumventing both US export controls and Chinese import restrictions to obtain the compute.

**Why it matters:** If accurate, this is concrete evidence that export controls on advanced AI chips are being actively bypassed, not just theoretically at risk. It comes right after Moonshot open-sourced Kimi K3's weights, meaning a model now freely available may have been trained on chips that reached China through illegal channels — a real test case for US-China chip control enforcement.

**Topics:** chips, policy

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Read the original: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/chinas-moonshot-ai-reportedly-used-nvidia-blackwell-chips-for-training-kimi-k3-company-circumvented-both-u-s-export-and-chinese-import-controls-to-acquire-compute
Canonical: https://www.parallelquant.com/posts/moonshot-ai-reportedly-used-smuggled-nvidia-chips-for-kimi-k3-10e1f2
Published by Parallel Quant — https://www.parallelquant.com