32 Blackwell B300 Chips Run in China Telecom Network

Israeli security firm Lava identified 32 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 chips operating within the network of China Telecom.

The discovery, reported by The Information, places restricted hardware inside a state-owned telecommunications provider despite U.S. export controls. Current regulations allow this class of chip to be sold only to whitelisted buyers who agree not to pass them to sanctioned parties in China. A 2025 report indicated that Chinese companies smuggled $1 billion worth of Nvidia AI chips in three months, with B200 processors initially the most sought after. Distributors were already preparing for B300-series parts before their official release.

Nvidia did not dispute the findings but characterized the volume as minor. A spokesperson told Tom's Hardware that recent court cases showed "insignificant diversion of controlled US products, less than one half of one percent in recent court cases, a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of domestic compute China already has." The company noted that tens of millions of GPUs are in service in approved countries, stating the report "demonstrates that smuggling is a nonfactor, blocked by governments on both sides of the globe."

Lava detected the chips using Nvidia’s DCGM Exporter, a tool for monitoring server health. Although intended for internal use, the software can often be accessed from outside the data center without a password. Lava has not determined the exact location of the chips within the China Telecom network or how they arrived. Nvidia is developing a tool to locate its chips but has not yet released it.

The B300 GPU, announced in March 2025, offers 50% more memory and FP4 compute than the previous B200 model. Nvidia described the chip as "built for the age of reasoning," targeting sophisticated large language models like DeepSeek R1. The processor was expected to ship by the end of 2025 and quickly became highly sought after.

Enforcement actions have intensified recently. In August 2026, nine people in Taiwan were indicted for illegally exporting B300 GPUs to China. Supermicro confirmed it fired several employees following an investigation into the smuggling. The scheme involved Flying Tiget Tech, a Taiwanese server trading firm with whitelisted status for GPU purchases.

Rising demand for Nvidia silicon has lifted prices across the market, including for older products. Servers built around the five-year-old A100 chip have tripled in price. Some buyers have resorted to retooling gaming GPUs to run AI workloads amid the continuing crackdown on smuggling.