A Chinese university with deep ties to the People's Liberation Army bought Nvidia's powerful H200 AI chips last month even though it sits on a U.S. export blacklist, procurement records show, the New York Post reports, citing Reuters.
Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, one of China's "Seven Sons of National Defense" schools, bought two H200 chips for 874,700 yuan, about $123,000, according to an Oct. 21 record on its own website. It bought them through a middleman, Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, not directly from Nvidia. This year the university also rented time on H200s and other top Nvidia processors through five contracts with Chinese companies.
The school does research on military aircraft, missiles and satellites. The Commerce Department put it on the Entity List in 2001 over missile proliferation and tightened the rules in 2019, so export licenses to it are denied in most cases.
The records surfaced as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang faces growing scrutiny in Washington over his push to loosen limits on AI chip sales to China, after reports that he was targeted by a Chinese spying operation. Three Republican committee chairmen have asked Huang for a briefing on Nov. 18 about his reported contacts with an alleged Chinese intelligence operative.
Northwestern Polytechnical, Nvidia and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security did not respond to requests for comment.
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