Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, a member of China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense” group that conducts research on military aircraft, missiles and satellites, bought two Nvidia H200 chips in October for 874,700 yuan ($123,000), according to an October 21 procurement record on the university’s website reviewed by Reuters. The chips, bought for its management school, were supplied by Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, a domestic company, rather than by Nvidia directly. The university is on the US Commerce Department’s Entity List, where export licences for controlled US technology are subject to a policy of denial in most circumstances.
The purchase was not the university’s only route to the hardware this year: procurement records show it also bought access to H200 chips and other powerful Nvidia processors through five contracts for rented computing capacity from Chinese companies. Reuters reviewed 26 procurement and corporate records from this year and found universities and research institutions, several with close links to China’s defence industry, buying restricted Nvidia chips outright or renting access to computing services built on them through domestic suppliers. The finding lands as scrutiny of Nvidia in Washington sharpens: Senator Kevin Cramer of the Senate Banking Committee has called on chief executive Jensen Huang to resign, and three Republican committee chairmen have asked Huang for a briefing on November 18.