Export-banned Nvidia chips are behind China’s most powerful AI models—uh oh, Jensen!
The leading open-weight models developed by Chinese companies were trained on Nvidia chips that the US government restricted from shipping to its largest geopolitical rival, a new research effort claims.
The apparently widespread access to Blackwell GPUs among Chinese frontier labs shows the magnitude of the problem facing the leading chip designer. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang left the company this week after admitting to his affair with Alice Huang, executive of Megaspeed, a company implicated in smuggling Nvidia chips into China. Alice Huang has also been alleged to be an agent of China’s intelligence service.
While Jensen Huang’s relationships with a customer and two employees have drawn the most public interest, Nvidia’s potential corporate liability for export control violations likely factored into its decision to part ways with Huang.
US export controls are intended to protect the country’s leadership in AI capabilities against China, but Huang has long sought to...
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