Filings suggest Moonshot AI used 32 Nvidia B300 servers in China

What the documents show

As The Economic Times on MSN reported, drawing on documents reviewed by Bloomberg News, Moonshot AI gained access this summer to servers packed with Nvidia's B300 chips. A GPU is the kind of processor used to train and run AI models, and the B300 is described as the most powerful AI accelerator on the market. The contract, signed in August, covers 32 servers from Super Micro Computer.

The filings value the servers at 432 million yuan ($64.8 million) and place them in China. US rules forbid selling such hardware to China without an explicit license. Bloomberg could not determine whether anyone obtained one.

A loan, two collateral layers, a rental

The papers are two financing contracts signed on Aug. 4. One side is Lingmeixin (Beijing) Technology, which owns the servers. The other is Beijing Zhongguancun Bank, which lent 200 million yuan ($30 million) for the purchase. Chinese companies must report certain details of such contracts to a database run by the credit agency of the People's Bank of China, and the bank filed these on Aug. 6.

Lingmeixin pledged two kinds of collateral, meaning assets that back a loan. One was the servers themselves. The other was 345.6 million yuan in earnings from a service contract with Beijing Dark Side of the Moon Technology, Moonshot's main entity. Lenders in AI data centers use this pairing because chips lose value quickly, while steady contract income is easier to count on.

A statement attached to the contracts says the hardware was bought to fulfil that service contract. It adds that Moonshot only has the right to use the computing service, not to own the equipment. That is the sense in which Moonshot is said to be renting.

Denials and a disappearing name

Moonshot disputes the accuracy of the documents. After Bloomberg sent requests for comment on Nov. 3, the database entries no longer mentioned Moonshot. A company spokesperson said, "We currently have no business relationship with Lingmeixin." The spokesperson also said Moonshot neither took part in nor authorized the financing and did not know about it.

Nvidia said the entities involved are not its customers and that it provides them no replacement products, service or support. Super Micro said it does not do business with them and is committed to following US export and re-export laws. Lingmeixin and the bank did not respond.

The odd supply chain and the price

Lingmeixin's website describes it as a drone distributor selling DJI products. It lists partners that include two state aerospace groups, CASIC and CASC, both heavily involved in China's missile program and subject to US export controls and financial sanctions. It bought the servers from a recently established subsidiary of Beijing Chunju Technology, which sells alcoholic drinks including Maotai liquor and has expanded into AI. The documents do not say how Chunju obtained the Super Micro machines or what it paid.

The contracts imply each server is worth 13.5 million yuan ($2 million), about a 350% markup over the going rate in the US. Bloomberg says that premium likely points to a black market, where demand outruns what export controls allow. SemiAnalysis has estimated that hundreds of thousands of AI chips have slipped into China.

Why Moonshot draws attention

Moonshot is behind the Kimi K3 model, which ranked near leading systems from Anthropic and OpenAI, and it is preparing a Hong Kong debut early next year. The US has accused it of training top models on restricted Blackwell chips, and after Kimi K3's release a White House official said it had accessed restricted Nvidia hardware. Bloomberg reported in July that the company has a channel to these processors.

Nothing here is a regulator's finding. The evidence is a set of filings that one party disputes and that were altered after reporters called. Whether a rental arrangement like this breaks US rules is an open question, and it is our reading, not the report's conclusion.