China uses Nvidia chips via Azure, Google clouds

Chinese firms still have access to Nvidia Inc’s high-end artificial intelligence (AI) chips by using cloud servers operated by Google and Microsoft despite the United States’ chip export ban.

Microsoft permits its customers in China to use Azure cloud servers based outside of mainland China, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing an employee of the US technology giant with knowledge of the services and a person directly involved in the sales.

The report said Google also lets Chinese customers use its AI cloud services, quoting the company as saying it is confident that the arrangement fulfills the US export rules.

These cloud servers use Nvidia’s A100 and H100, which have been banned by the US Commerce Department from being shipped to China since October 2022.

Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet have yet to respond to Reuters’s requests for comment.

The Information’s report came after OpenAI, a Microsoft-backed company that owns ChatGPT, has from July 9 strengthened the screening of its customers’ locations to make sure that those in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau cannot use its AI chatbot via virtual private network (VPNs).

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, OpenAI has not offered its services to Russia, China, Iran or North Korea. People in Hong Kong and mainland China had to use ChatGPT via VPNs, but now they can’t connect.

“The US is worried that its leading generative AI technology will be used to improve industrial production efficiency in China,” a Guangdong-based writer says in an article published on July 2.

“When ChatGPT was available for global users during the past one-and-a-half years, China has already mastered the core AI technology principles and architecture and launched its own