Reported talks to rent from a European GPU cloud
Chinese AI company Moonshot AI held talks to rent Nvidia's advanced "Blackwell" GPUs (chips used for AI computing) housed in European data centers, CNBC reported on Nov. 5 (Nov. 5 Japan time). The report cited four people familiar with the private talks, who said the counterparty was a "neocloud," a newer type of cloud provider that hosts GPUs and rents out computing capacity. According to the report, a proposal to rent a cluster of more than 8,000 Blackwell chips came up in the talks. No deal was reported. Moonshot has made no official announcement and did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.
About two hours after CNBC's report, @notjazii on X posted to the same effect. The post does not identify the source of the information.
moonshot is looking to rent nvidia gpus reportedly kimi team has been in talks to rent 8k+ nvidia blackwell gpus in europe team is planning to use these gpus to increase capacity so they can serve more users and even use them for model training good to see team looking for more compute cuz k3.1 pro has been super slow since launch and feels like they can’t even serve it properly right now and after k3 release team even had to pause subs so yeah k3 was the best model from kimi and i think if they have enough compute they can make really good models super excited to see what they cook next
Chip count from one source; use mainly inference
According to CNBC, what each person described differed. Three said the computing resources sought were Blackwell chips, and two cited interest in renting equipment in Europe for inference (running a trained model to return answers to users). One mentioned interest in training. The scale of more than 8,000 chips also rests on the account of one person. One of the people described Moonshot's approach as "very aggressive."
The talks took place "this year," and one person said some of them came after July. The report does not make clear whether talks are still continuing. The name of the provider, the number of chips actually secured and when they would go into service have not been disclosed.
Proposal to prepay 30-50% more, possibly as a hedge against rule changes
According to one person cited by CNBC, a proposal was made for Moonshot to prepay 30% to 50% more than non-Chinese customers. The report did not say who made the proposal. What would rise is the prepayment, and how the total value of the contract would change is also unknown.
According to CNBC, contracts with Chinese-linked customers tend to involve larger prepayments. It said this is so neoclouds and the financial institutions funding them can prepare for a possible future ban on remote access from abroad.
Rules do not reach access via overseas clouds; Nvidia reportedly caps China business
U.S. export controls effectively bar imports of Blackwell chips into China. According to CNBC, however, regulators do not have authority under current law to broadly control access through overseas clouds. The "Remote Access Security Act," which would extend export controls to cover access through the cloud, passed the U.S. House 369-22 on Jan. 12 but has not passed the Senate.
Britain's Financial Times (FT) reported on Nov. 3 (Nov. 3 Japan time) that Nvidia had asked cloud providers to sell at least 51% of their services to companies outside China. Citing five people, the report said the requirement applies only to new contracts and was conveyed verbally through channels such as the sales team. Nvidia neither confirmed nor denied the report to AFP. How this condition affects the talks in Europe is unclear.
Nvidia did not respond to CNBC's request for comment. However, a spokesperson asked about this week's reports said America cannot win the AI race unless American AI infrastructure wins around the world. The spokesperson also argued that if the world's clouds rely on foreign chips, models and applications will also be foreign.
New sign-ups halted in July; K3.1 Pro responses are slow
Moonshot itself acknowledged a shortage of computing resources in July. Saying demand for "Kimi K3," released on July 16, had far exceeded forecasts and was nearing the limits of its existing capacity, it stopped accepting new paid subscriptions on July 19. It said it would reopen sign-ups gradually while adding capacity, but did not give a timeline.
"Kimi K3.1 Pro," announced on Oct. 23 (Oct. 24 Japan time), also lags in response speed. In measurements by U.S.-based Artificial Analysis, output on Moonshot's API runs at 32 tokens per second, and it takes 146 seconds for the first answer to appear. Whether this slowness is due to a shortage of computing resources has not been confirmed.
Reports about its efforts to procure computing resources have also continued. Finwire reported that The Information said on July 28 that Moonshot was seeking additional Blackwell chips to train its next model, "Kimi K4." Bloomberg reported on July 30 that K3 was trained on 20,000 Nvidia chips provided through the cloud of China's Alibaba. According to The Next Web, Alibaba denied providing the older-generation H200 but did not deny the 20,000-chip arrangement.
U.S. government alleged use in Thailand in July
Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, posted on X on July 22 (July 22 Japan time) that Moonshot had obtained servers equipped with the Blackwell-generation "GB300" and used GB300 chips in Thailand. The post said this was likely for training AI models but did not make evidence public. Moonshot did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said on X the same week that the government was considering placing Moonshot on a trade blacklist and imposing sanctions. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy criticized Kratsios' remarks as groundless. According to one person cited by CNBC, some of the talks in Europe took place after these allegations.
- Moonshot halts new paid subscriptions due to a surge in demandOfficial
- Senior U.S. official alleges Moonshot used GB300 chips in ThailandU.S. government claim
- The Information reports a push for more Blackwell chips to train K4Report
- Bloomberg reports K3 was trained on 20,000 chips via AlibabaReport
- FT reports Nvidia asked cloud providers to meet a 51% conditionReport
- CNBC reports talks to rent Blackwell chips in EuropeReport
Hong Kong listing under consideration for next year, valuation about $50 billion
Bloomberg reported in October that Moonshot had reached a valuation of about $50 billion in its latest funding round and was considering a Hong Kong listing in the January-March quarter of 2027. The valuation was up from $31.5 billion at its summer fundraising, and the company is considering raising up to $5 billion in the listing, the report said. The timing of the listing could change. Securing computing resources and the course of U.S. regulation will be focal points for the listing plan.
