At least $1 billion in Nvidia computer chips were smuggled into China in the three-months span after President Trump imposed export controls on the cutting-edge chips, according to a bombshell report Thursday.
Nvidia’s powerful B200 chip – favored by US tech giants like OpenAI and Google to power their artificial intelligence models – are banned for sale to China due to government rules limiting shipments for chips that exceed certain performance thresholds.
However, the chip was still being sold in May by Chinese suppliers to data center operators that support China-based tech firms, the Financial Times reported, citing an analysis of sales contracts, company filings and interviews with sources with direct knowledge of the deals.
“Export controls will not prevent the most advanced Nvidia products from entering China,” a Chinese data center operator told the FT. “What it creates is just inefficiency and huge profits for the risk-taking middle men.”
In May, the Trump administration had banned Nvidia from selling less-powerful H20 chips that were specifically built by the company to adhere to previous export controls imposed on their more powerful chips during the Biden administration.
However, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang revealed last week that Trump had reversed course and would allow H20 chips to be sold in China.
Critics have argued that China-based companies were circumventing the export controls to acquire Nvidia’s hardware. That speculation surged earlier this year after reports that China-based AI firm DeepSeek had a greater supply of Nvidia chips than it publicly admitted.
The FT said it reviewed evidence that Chinese distributors in the Guangdong, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces had sold Nvidia’s B200 and other restricted chips such as the H100 and H200.
The FT said there was no evidence that Nvidia had any involvement or knowledge of illicit chip sales to Chinese entities.
The company has long said that it complies with all US laws on chip technology.
“Trying to cobble together data centers from smuggled products is a losing proposition, both technically and economically,” Nvidia said in a statement. “Data centers require service and support, which we provide only to authorized Nvidia products.”
Last month, the chip supplier became the first public company in history to surpass a $4 trillion market valuation.