A Chinese university with deep ties to the People's Liberation Army bought Nvidia's powerful H200 artificial intelligence chips last month despite being on a US export blacklist, according to sources citing procurement records on the university's website.
An October 21 record shows Northwestern Polytechnical University paid 874,700 yuan (about $123,000) for two H200 chips for its management school, buying them from Chinese firm Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology rather than from Nvidia. The university also signed five contracts this year to rent computing capacity from Chinese companies that gave it access to H200s and other advanced Nvidia processors.
Based in Xian, the university conducts research related to military aircraft, missiles and satellites. The US Commerce Department added it to the Entity List in 2001 over alleged missile proliferation and tightened the restrictions in 2019, making export licences for controlled US technology subject to a policy of denial in most cases. The university, Nvidia and the Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.
The findings come as Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang faces mounting scrutiny in Washington over his lobbying for looser limits on AI chip sales to China. Three Republican congressional committee chairmen have asked Huang for a briefing on November 18 about his reported contacts with an alleged Chinese intelligence operative.