A Chinese university with links to the military bought two of Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips despite being on a US export blacklist, according to procurement records reviewed by Reuters — the latest evidence that Washington’s controls on advanced technology are leaking.
Key Points
- Nvidia H200 chips China — Northwestern Polytechnical University bought two Nvidia H200 processors for 874,700 yuan ($123,000) through a local reseller.
- The university has been on the US Entity List since 2001, and exports to it require a licence that is generally denied.
- Reuters found the university also rented access to Nvidia-powered computing through five contracts this year, and other Chinese universities bought restricted chips.
- Nvidia has lost about $430 billion in market value over two trading sessions as the scandal widened around chief executive Jensen Huang.
Northwestern Polytechnical University, based in Xi’an and a member of China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense” group of defence-focused universities, bought the two H200 processors for its management school from Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, a local reseller, rather than directly from Nvidia, according to a procurement record dated 21 October. A separate notice from the university’s cybersecurity school, dated 4 September, lists two more H200 cards for 796,000 yuan.
The H200 is among Nvidia’s most powerful processors for training and running advanced AI systems. Exports to China require US approval, with licences generally denied for institutions on the Entity List. The university conducts research related to military aircraft, missiles and satellites, and has been on the blacklist since 14 May 2001; since September 2016 a licence has been required to export, re-export or transfer any item subject to US export rules to it. A rule change in January 2026 moved some H200 exports to China from a presumption of denial to case-by-case review — but that change did not remove the university’s separate restrictions.
Rented computing, and a wider pattern
The university also obtained computing power without buying the underlying hardware. Two awards from its cybersecurity school in January covered separate Nvidia HGX H200 eight-GPU systems: a reinforcement-learning fine-tuning service running from February to September, and a multitask fine-tuning service running from February to August, each costing about 441,000 yuan.
A wider Reuters review of 26 Chinese procurement and corporate records from this year found several other instances of universities and research institutions obtaining US-restricted Nvidia chips or renting Nvidia-powered computing through domestic suppliers. Shenzhen University bought three H100 processors for 769,800 yuan in September, and Beihang University bought four A800 processors for 489,000 yuan in April. The A100 and A800 are barred from export to all Chinese entities.
A scandal that keeps widening
The procurement findings land in the middle of a far larger controversy. The Information has reported that a network of companies across China and Singapore, tied to a former executive of a Singapore firm, moved about 240,000 H100, H200 and some A100 chips into China, worth at least $7.5 billion. Those allegations are unproven, and Nvidia disputes that anything improper happened. No illegal diversion of US-origin chips has been publicly established.
Even so, the pressure is mounting. Nvidia’s board announced on 8 November that it had opened an independent investigation, which will examine claims that Huang may have been targeted by foreign intelligence, and the FBI is separately examining whether the chief executive was targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. Three Republican congressional committee chairmen have requested a briefing with Huang on 18 November. Nvidia shares ended Tuesday at $168.89, down $9.78 or 5.47%, and the company reports earnings on 17 November, when investors will watch closely for commentary on export compliance.
For background on the investigation, see our report on Nvidia’s board opening a probe into whether Jensen Huang was targeted by Chinese spying, and on Anthropic launching Claude Fable 5.2 ahead of its planned IPO. More in our Technology section.
Sources: ABP Live, “Nvidia PLA-Linked Chinese University Buys H200 AI Chips Worth $123,000 Despite US Blacklist” (https://news.abplive.com/news/world/nvidia-pla-linked-chinese-university-buys-h200-ai-chips-worth-123-000-despite-us-blacklist-1875491/amp); Traders Union, “Nvidia loses more than $400 billion in market value as China chip scandal widens” (https://tradersunion.com/news/stocks/show/4191154-nvidia-loses-more/).