Moonshot AI Secures 20,000 Nvidia Chips via Alibaba Cloud Deal: Report

Chinese artificial intelligence firm Moonshot has secured a computing agreement with Alibaba Group for the use of approximately 20,000 Nvidia chips, according to a Bloomberg News report citing people familiar with the matter.

The deal provides Moonshot with a crucial supply of high-performance processors at a time when U.S. export controls have severely limited access to advanced computing power for Chinese technology companies.

Details of the Arrangement

The chip cluster provided by Alibaba reportedly consists of Nvidia's earlier Hopper-generation processors, which were the industry standard for training and deploying AI models before the introduction of the newer Blackwell architecture. This computing power accounts for a key portion of the resources behind Moonshot's Kimi large language models.

As one of Moonshot's largest investors, Alibaba expects its portfolio companies to utilize its cloud computing services, the report noted. This arrangement highlights the strategic importance of cloud infrastructure providers in the AI supply chain. An Alibaba spokesperson told Reuters that an alleged supply of H200 chips was "completely groundless," though the Bloomberg report specified the broader Hopper generation.

Navigating Sanctions and Scrutiny

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Access to powerful GPUs is a primary constraint for Chinese firms aiming to develop competitive AI systems. The report adds that Moonshot is actively seeking additional chips to train its next-generation model and is exploring access to Nvidia’s latest Blackwell processors through channels in Southeast Asia.

The deal comes as Moonshot faces increasing scrutiny from Washington. Last week, a top White House technology adviser, Michael Kratsios, stated the U.S. government had information indicating Moonshot developed its 2.8-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 model by distilling technology from U.S.-based Anthropic's frontier Fable model.

Market Context

Moonshot's rapid progress has created complex competitive dynamics. The Bloomberg report mentioned that the performance of Moonshot's Kimi model has surpassed Alibaba's own Qwen model on key metrics, despite using similar training resources, which has reportedly caused some disappointment within Alibaba.

Reuters stated it could not independently confirm the report. Moonshot, Nvidia, and U.S. government departments did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment on the matter.