At least seven Chinese universities that assist the nation’s armed forces and defence trade are looking for entry to Nvidia’s H200 chips, essentially the most highly effective synthetic intelligence processors ever allowed by the US to be sold in China, in accordance to a evaluate of procurement data.
Two of the establishments which have expressed curiosity within the H200 chips – Beihang University and Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU) – rank amongst China’s “Seven Sons of National Defence”, an elite group devoted to aiding the People’s Liberation Army.
Both colleges have been blacklisted by the US Commerce Department owing to their work advancing China’s military.
Records reviewed by Bloomberg News present that Beihang’s School of Cyber Science and Technology, which says it has “national defence characteristics and aerospace advantages”, is pursuing a lease to use the Nvidia chips.
NWPU’s School of Cyberspace Security can also be looking for to hire entry to H200s, in accordance to the data. The college says it carries out necessary nationwide cyber duties, has a nationwide defence innovation group, and that many graduates go on to serve in military models.
Bloomberg additionally recognized greater than 25 Chinese universities and labs that collaborate with the nation’s military and defence trade which might be both already utilizing or looking for to receive older technology Nvidia chips, in accordance to data courting again to 2011.
Six of the colleges are on the Commerce Department’s blacklist due to an company willpower that their work with the PLA – together with creating missiles and nuclear expertise – threatens US nationwide safety.
Several blacklisted entities say on their web sites that they’re already utilizing the older technology Nvidia chips. It is unclear whether or not any of the faculties succeeded in acquiring entry to the newer H200 chips or what particularly they’d do with them in the event that they did.
The Bloomberg evaluate didn’t flip up any proof of wrongdoing, corresponding to violations of US export controls, or indications the colleges had been looking for to entry massive numbers of chips.
The authorities in China to this point have blocked the nation’s AI corporations from shopping for H200s, owing partially to considerations {that a} flood of American-designed AI chips would hinder the federal government’s long-held objective of creating an indigenous chip trade.
Bloomberg’s findings present that has not stopped China’s military-linked establishments from exploring methods to use Nvidia’s merchandise anyway, signalling the chips’ superior options maintain enduring attraction.
The knowledge additionally spotlight considerations by US lawmakers that Nvidia’s expertise – which has powered the AI growth and made it the world’s most dear firm – may find yourself doubtlessly benefiting China’s armed forces as properly, a prospect the corporate has repeatedly dismissed.
An Nvidia spokesperson stated it could be “silly” to suppose that the Chinese military would depend on “a few dozen second-hand GPUs”.
“China has more than enough domestic chips for all of its military applications, with millions to spare,” the Nvidia spokesperson stated. “Just like it would be nonsensical for the American military to use Chinese technology, it makes no sense for the Chinese military to depend on American technology.”
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington stated that “China’s position regarding US chip exports to China has been consistent: We advocate that China and the United States achieve mutual benefit and win-win outcomes through cooperation, and we oppose the politicisation, instrumentalisation, and weaponization of technological and economic issues.”
The Chinese universities referenced on this article didn’t reply to requests for remark. Neither the White House nor the Commerce Department commented.
The establishments linked to China’s armed forces pursued Nvidia chips in a wide range of methods, in accordance to the paperwork reviewed by Bloomberg.
In some circumstances, they’ve tried to purchase them by means of third-party brokers. In others, they’ve sought contracts to hire the chips’ computing energy. The earliest documentation Bloomberg was in a position to determine exhibiting a Chinese military-linked college looking for entry to H200 chips was dated June 2025, with the efforts persevering with in 2026, the data present.
In many circumstances, the colleges and labs sought entry to comparatively small portions of chips corresponding to a single server with eight Nvidia graphics processing models – the high-speed processors utilized in AI. Those quantities are higher fitted to educational work and a fraction of what high Chinese AI corporations like Alibaba Group Holding or Baidu would want for industrial functions.
“That’s research lab-scale, and much smaller than what hyperscalers buy and use for training the most advanced frontier AI models,” stated Michael Deng, a expertise analyst at Bloomberg Economics.
“But a server like that is enough to take one of China’s leading open-weight AI models and adapt it for military applications like autonomous weapons development or cyber operations,” Deng stated. “That work would run significantly faster on H200s compared to domestic Chinese chips.”
Efforts by PLA-tied entities to entry Nvidia’s sought-after chips underscore the strain the US will face in protecting subtle American expertise away from China’s military following US President Donald Trump’s determination to enable H200 gross sales to vetted Chinese clients.
The transfer, carried out after an extensive lobbying campaign by Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, marked a big easing of US export restrictions geared toward reining in Beijing’s AI ambitions.
Huang has lengthy rejected warnings from US lawmakers and advocates in Washington of a harder stance towards China that the corporate’s chips may find yourself aiding the Chinese military.
“There’s a belief that somehow if we provided American chips to foreign countries and specifically China that the Chinese military would be building their military and building airplanes and aircraft carriers using American chips,” Huang stated in a Time interview in 2025.
“They have plenty of their own chips, and their companies are formidable. The idea that China does not have a technology industry we now know is lunacy.”
Even so, high Chinese chipmakers corresponding to Huawei Technologies and Semiconductor Manufacturing International lag behind their US counterparts in each high quality and quantity of AI chips produced.
“The question is not whether the PLA wants to depend on Nvidia, but whether it realistically has any choice in the matter,” stated Ryan Fedasiuk, a fellow on the American Enterprise Institute and a former State Department official. “For now, the answer is no.”
“They are requesting these chips both because nobody can beat Nvidia on quality, and because there are not a sufficient number of Huawei-designed alternatives in production for them to bid on,” stated Fedasiuk, who has revealed analysis documenting Chinese military use of US expertise.
As a part of its evaluate, Bloomberg examined a wide range of public knowledge, together with Chinese procurement bulletins in addition to the web sites of college labs and professors detailing their computing sources.
Sunny Cheung, who research China and rising expertise as a fellow with the Jamestown Foundation, helped develop the standards and proof for figuring out whether or not Chinese universities or labs needs to be thought of direct collaborators with China’s military or defence sector.
The evaluation included Seven Sons establishments, these positioned beneath Commerce Department restrictions, those who signed memorandums of understanding, undertook joint analysis or educational programmes, or participated in direct expertise switch with the PLA or China’s defence sector.
Universities whose engagement didn’t exceed actions corresponding to internet hosting campus visits by the People’s Liberation Army or collaborating in military recruitment had been excluded from the evaluation.
“We are actively empowering this ecosystem,” Cheung concluded after reviewing the information.
Nvidia’s H200 hails from the corporate’s Hopper line of processors used for coaching and operating AI fashions. It was essentially the most highly effective AI chip available on the market – with superior reminiscence capability and bandwidth – till the introduction of the corporate’s subsequent technology Blackwell fashions in late 2024.
A Council on Foreign Relations report in 2025 estimated the H200’s processing energy at greater than six occasions stronger than the H20, which was beforehand essentially the most superior chip accepted on the market to China.
In January, the Commerce Department issued a rule formalising Trump’s H200 determination that restricted gross sales to verified Chinese patrons. The regulation particularly requires corporations looking for US export licences for the chips to verify that the expertise is not going to go to a Chinese military function or finish person, together with for nuclear, missile, chemical or organic weapons.
The sort of AI processor Nvidia sells could be used as a part of a pc to develop weapons, reasonably than be put in as a part of a missile. Both the US and China would deploy cutting-edge chips to increase the computing energy of military programs, considerably bolstering their functionality, in accordance to Isaac Harris, government director of the Frontier Security Institute.
“Nobody is talking about putting a GPU into a weapons system – that’d be a complete waste of money and of a GPU,” stated Harris, whose group advises nationwide safety officers on deploying AI.
“The militaries of each country would use the chips to accelerate their own research and development of future capabilities as well as operating the complex systems that require large amounts of compute such as targeting and data management.”
Those looking for leases to use the newer H200 mannequin as opposed to shopping for the chips outright are making the most of what some nationwide safety officers take into account to be a large flaw in US laws: If the chips are hosted exterior China and the college is paying for distant entry, the {hardware} technically wouldn’t cross a border and subsequently wouldn’t be thought of an “export”.
Such a transaction wouldn’t violate export controls even when the US has already blacklisted the college in query and prosecuted folks for exporting tech to it, as is the case with each Beihang and NWPU, that are each looking for H200 compute leases.
Several entities recognized within the Bloomberg evaluate have already been utilizing older technology Nvidia chips together with the A100, A800 and H20. Those fashions had been legally allowed to be offered to clients in China at varied factors beneath US export guidelines.
At the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, a supercomputing centre is powered by 144 of Nvidia’s A800 chipsets, in accordance to a webpage detailing its {hardware} sources.
The college was blacklisted by the Commerce Department in 2020 after US officers concluded it “directly participates in the research and development, and production, of advanced weapons and advanced weapons systems in support of People’s Liberation Army modernisation”.
Then there’s Harbin Institute of Technology, which the US blacklisted in 2020 after figuring out it had “sought to use US technology for Chinese missile programmes”. It has already put Nvidia’s H100 chips to use, in accordance to a college webpage, and in 2025 submitted a bid to receive its H20 mannequin, in accordance to data reviewed by Bloomberg. The college is one in every of China’s Seven Sons of National Defense.
Another establishment, the University of Science and Technology of China, which was blacklisted for its position in advancing China’s quantum expertise and nuclear capabilities, says on its web site that one in every of its supercomputing programs is powered by 200 of Nvidia’s A100 chipsets.
For US lawmakers who favour harder restrictions to maintain superior expertise out of China’s palms, a core challenge is making certain that AI chips like these made by Nvidia don’t get used by the Chinese armed forces.
“We know for a fact we don’t want them to touch Chinese military end users,” Representative Brian Mast, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stated at an occasion in May in Washington.
“If it was just kids playing video games, I could care less,” added Mast, whose panel has jurisdiction over US export management programmes. “But when it’s touching real weapons systems, real military, real casualties, Congress is going to pay attention.” BLOOMBERG