Google and Microsoft Allegedly Providing Chinese Access to Nvidia’s AI Chips

Google and Microsoft are reportedly letting Chinese companies use Nvidia’s AI chips via data centers, as per a report from The Information on Wednesday.

Despite U.S. rules restricting Chinese firms from directly importing Nvidia’s top-tier AI chips, these companies are accessing them indirectly through data centers, the report states.

The Biden Administration is proposing new regulations that would require cloud providers to verify whether foreign entities are using U.S. data centers for training AI models, Reuters reported.”We can’t allow non-state actors or China to use our cloud for their models,” said U.S. 

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in an interview with Reuters. 

“We control chip exports, and those chips are in American cloud data centers, so we need to prevent potential misuse.”

According to sources cited by The Information, Microsoft rents Nvidia’s A100 and H100 chips to Chinese customers via data centers located outside mainland China.

Google also provides Chinese customers with access to servers in data centers but claims to comply with U.S. export regulations, as per The Information.