Moonshot AI, the Chinese start-up behind the Kimi family of large language models, has been linked to a rental deal for some of Nvidia's most advanced AI hardware. The servers are located inside China, where such chips cannot legally be shipped without a US export licence.
The arrangement came to light through financing paperwork reviewed by Bloomberg, according to a report by Lianhe Zaobao. Moonshot AI has denied taking part in or authorising the deal, while Nvidia says the companies involved are not its customers.
What the Documents Show
According to the documents, a contract was signed in August for Moonshot AI to rent 32 servers built by Super Micro Computer. Each machine is fitted with Nvidia B300 graphics processors, currently the most powerful AI accelerators available.
The servers carry a combined value of 432 million yuan, or roughly S$82.73 million. They sit in Qingyang, a city in Gansu province in northwestern China that has been designated as one of the country's eight planned national computing hubs.
A Financing Chain Through a Beijing Bank
The hardware is owned by Lingmeixin (Beijing) Technology, which signed two financing agreements with Beijing Zhongguancun Bank on 4 August to fund the purchase. In a statement attached to those agreements, Lingmeixin said the equipment was earmarked to fulfil a service contract with Moonshot AI.
Lingmeixin also stressed that Moonshot AI would only have the right to use the computing service, not ownership of the machines. Structuring access as a rental rather than a sale is one way such deals can be framed, though selling the underlying chips into China without a licence could still breach US rules.
Prices Point to a Strained Supply Market
The agreements put the value of each server at 13.5 million yuan, which is around 350 percent higher than prevailing prices in the US. That gap reflects how scarce top-tier chips have become in China under Washington's export restrictions.
With demand from Chinese AI developers far outstripping legitimate supply, the premium is consistent with a thriving black market for advanced accelerators.
References Disappear From an Official Database
Chinese law requires companies to lodge documents tied to financing agreements with a database run by the Credit Reference Centre of the People's Bank of China. Beijing Zhongguancun Bank submitted the filings on 6 August, two days after the deals were signed.
Bloomberg contacted Moonshot AI, Lingmeixin and the bank for comment on 3 November. After that outreach, the versions of the documents available in the database no longer mentioned Moonshot AI.
Moonshot and Nvidia Distance Themselves
A Moonshot AI spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company has no current business dealings with Lingmeixin, adding that it had no knowledge of the financing or guarantee arrangements and had neither joined nor authorised them.
Nvidia said the entities involved in the August purchase "are not Nvidia customers" and that it does not provide replacement products, service or support to them.
Why the Stakes Are High for Moonshot
The report adds to existing pressure on the company. Since Moonshot AI launched its Kimi K3 model in July, US officials have repeatedly accused it of training some of its most capable systems on restricted Nvidia Blackwell-series chips.
Moonshot AI is now building a successor to Kimi K3 and is preparing a Hong Kong listing that could happen as early as the start of next year. Questions over hardware sourcing could draw added scrutiny as it approaches public markets.
For the wider AI industry, the episode shows how hard it is to enforce chip controls once hardware enters layered ownership, rental and financing structures. It also highlights the compliance risks facing Chinese AI start-ups that need frontier-level compute while courting international investors.
Source: 联合早报
