Blacklisted Chinese Firm Allegedly Bypassed U.S.
Export Controls to Access Advanced AI Chips
Washington imposed sanctions on Inspur because of its work with the Chinese
military. But the company’s subsidiary kept shipping Nvidia’s best chips to feed
China’s leading A.I. firms.
·
Inspur
blacklisted by U.S.: The U.S.
added Inspur Group
to its Entity List in 2023 over concerns about its links to China’s military and
efforts to obtain U.S. technology for military supercomputers.
·
Aivres became a key subsidiary: After the blacklist designation, Inspur's
U.S. subsidiary began operating under the name Aivres, while continuing
business activities in Silicon Valley.
·
Alleged
export-control loopholes:
The report says Aivres and Inspur's global subsidiaries
allegedly used corporate structures
and overseas data centres to continue accessing advanced American
technology despite restrictions on Inspur.
·
Billions
in advanced technology exported:
From April 2024 to February 2026, Aivres reportedly exported
at least US$5.6 billion of
advanced technology from the U.S. to Southeast Asia, including more
than US$3 billion in Nvidia
Blackwell-based computers and equipment.
·
China-linked
customers: Some of
the technology went to Southeast Asian data centres and technology companies serving
major Chinese firms, including Alibaba
and ByteDance.
·
Servers
reportedly returned to China:
Trade records indicate that servers from Malaysian manufacturers were shipped to
China, including to Maginfra,
a relatively obscure Chinese company supplying high-performance computers to universities
and state-owned enterprises.
·
Maginfra raises further concerns: Maginfra reportedly
imported more than US$700 million
of servers from Malaysia over six months, including more than 1,500
high-value servers consistent with advanced AI computing capabilities.
·
Possible
Inspur links: Corporate
records, patents and business connections reportedly show links between Maginfra and Inspur-related companies and personnel, although
the companies have not publicly confirmed such relationships.
·
Chinese
state and research connections:
Public records reportedly show Chinese universities, including institutions involved
in defence research, obtaining advanced servers associated with Maginfra and Inspur.
·
U.S. investigation: Federal officials have reportedly begun examining
Aivres' business activities, although
the current status of the investigation remains unclear.
·
Regulatory
loopholes remain: U.S. rules
restrict direct shipment of the most advanced chips to blacklisted Chinese companies,
but restrictions on remote
access to AI data centres located in third countries have been a
significant area of concern.
·
Trump administration
changed AI-chip rules: The administration
reportedly rolled back some Biden-era restrictions on Chinese companies remotely
accessing overseas data centres while considering new rules.
·
Nvidia
relationship: Despite
the controversy, Aivres has remained a visible Nvidia partner and was reportedly
involved in producing servers for Nvidia's next-generation AI systems.
·
H200 licence: The U.S. government reportedly approved Maginfra for a licence to purchase Nvidia's H200 chips, which are less
advanced than the latest Blackwell generation.
[ABS News Service/07.09.2026]
For years, a sign outside one of Silicon Valley’s many nondescript
offices said Inspur, the name of one of China’s most important technology companies.
But in March 2023, the United States added
Inspur Group to the so-called entity list, a blacklist
with more than 3,000 companies that have been restricted from doing business with
the United States because they are considered a security risk.
Not long after, the Inspur sign was changed to Aivres, the name of Inspur’s new U.S. subsidiary. The subsidiary
continued with its Chinese parent company’s work, helping it build a thriving global
network to provide the computing power that supplies China’s growing artificial
intelligence industry.
The Silicon Valley subsidiary, which appears to be taking advantage
of several loopholes in U.S. export law, has played a key role in Inspur’s sidestepping
of American restrictions. Federal officials have begun looking into the subsidiary’s
business, but it is not clear where that inquiry stands, said four officials who
spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss it.
The New York Times examined thousands of shipment records, corporate
documents and supply contracts to piece together how Inspur’s network works. Reporters
also visited sites in China, Southeast Asia and California, and spoke with more
than a dozen current and former officials, tech executives and industry analysts.
The U.S. government prohibits the most advanced chips, like the Blackwell
chip from the Silicon Valley giant Nvidia, from being sent to any company in China.
And U.S. law bars any company anywhere in the world from buying restricted products
made with American technology on behalf of a blacklisted company. But there are
few restrictions on companies in China that bar them from remotely gaining access
to A.I. data centers in Southeast Asia.
Whether Chinese firms are getting access to cutting-edge technology,
particularly high-end computer chips made by Nvidia, has become a hot question in
Silicon Valley and Washington, where executives and officials worry that China could
use A.I. for hacking, surveillance and military operations.
Chinese A.I. companies are also closing the performance gap on systems
made by their American competitors, raising concerns that the Chinese companies
are using American technology.
From April 2024 through February 2026, Aivres
exported at least $5.6 billion of advanced technology from the United States to
Southeast Asia, including more than $3 billion of computers containing cutting-edge
Blackwell chips and equipment from Nvidia, according to trade records analyzed by ImportGenius, a data firm,
and The Times.
That technology went to data centers and
technology firms in Southeast Asia that serve China’s biggest tech firms, including
Alibaba and ByteDance, trade records show. Megaspeed, a China-linked
company that U.S. officials have been investigating over whether it smuggled restricted chips into China, was among
that group of recipients. (One of Megaspeed’s subsidiaries
has financial ties with Alibaba, according to Malaysian business documents.)
Other technology went from Inspur’s network of global subsidiaries
to an electronics manufacturer in Malaysia, which has been shipping unlabeled but high-priced servers to China, according to trade
records drawn mostly from Malaysia and Indonesia. The servers are sent to a new
firm, Maginfra, which has supplied high-performance computers
to Chinese universities and state-owned firms, according to Chinese contracts and
procurement records.
Inspur, Aivres, Maginfra,
Alibaba and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment. Megaspeed did not provide a comment. John Rizzo, a spokesman
for Nvidia, said the company did not support “diverted products,” and sold to well-known
partners “who work with us to ensure that all sales comply with U.S. export control
rules.”
The Trump administration rolled
back Biden-era restrictions on remote
access by Chinese companies to data centers in other countries,
and both the administration and Congress have been weighing new rules to replace
them. Nvidia’s Mr. Rizzo said the business brought “tens of billions of dollars
and high-paying jobs home.”
The administration has also taken a more cautious approach to placing
sanctions on Chinese firms, after attempts last year to expand the entity list drew blowback from China. Inside the Commerce Department, which enforces the list, six current
and former officials described an agency that had lost its appetite for cases involving
China or Nvidia. Ten months have passed without a firm’s being added to the entity
list, the longest
stretch in 18 years.
A White House official said the Trump administration had enacted
the most rigorous export control regime in modern history and was committed to safeguarding
America’s national security.
But Jordan Nanos, an analyst at SemiAnalysis,
a tech research firm, who has studied Aivres’s business,
said that the firm operated in the United States with the same servers, employees
and offices as its parent company, Inspur, and that federal officials seemed to
have done little about it.
“Are they trying to ban them, or are they not?” he said.
Most Americans have never heard of Inspur, but the company is among
the world’s largest makers of computer servers. It has also dodged one sanction
after another.
When the U.S. blacklisted Inspur in 2023, it got a new name in the
United States. In China, Inspur got a new address.
The entity list, which the United States uses to block trade to targeted
companies, applies to the specific company name and address designated by the government.
Just days after its 2023 listing, Inspur registered its main business to a building down the road.
Four months ago, a Times reporter visited that address, in the eastern
Chinese city Jinan. It was a nondescript building with no signage beyond a bank
on the ground floor. A security guard confirmed that Inspur had an office there,
but said not many people worked in it. He said Inspur was really based at the industrial
park down the street.
That compound was busy. A series of dark gray
high-rises stood inside a vast enclosure ringed by a hedge of roses and rows of
motorbikes. Inside the gates, a red sign flashed a key slogan from China’s leader,
Xi Jinping: “Chinese dream.”
Inspur, which is majority-owned by Shandong Province, began as a
state-owned electronics factory. It developed the world’s first pager capable of displaying Chinese characters. More than a decade ago,
the Chinese military and state turned
to Inspur’s servers to reduce the reliance on foreign
companies.
That made Inspur an American target. In 2020, the Trump administration
included it on a list of Chinese military companies. In 2023, the Biden administration
said Inspur Group had sought U.S. technology to make military supercomputers and
put it on the entity list. That meant U.S. firms could no longer ship to it without
a special license.
A loophole quickly opened. Companies like Intel had been selling
to Inspur’s subsidiary, not the parent company, which the order did not cover.
Two years later, the second Trump administration closed a part of
the loophole, adding some of Inspur’s
subsidiaries to the blacklist. Aivres was not among them.
Records show that billions of dollars of advanced servers and other
technology have flowed from Aivres and Inspur’s other
global subsidiaries to cloud-computing and assembly firms across Southeast Asia.
One connection stands out. Maginfra was
created in China last year, and quickly began doing brisk business with a Malaysian
electronics firm that transacts with Inspur’s companies in Hong Kong, mainland China,
the United States and Singapore.
Maginfra imported more than $700 million
of servers from Malaysia into China in a six-month period, including more than 1,500
servers that were priced consistently with high-end A.I. capabilities, ImportGenius data shows. These entries do not include detailed
descriptions of the servers or chips inside them, but they do indicate per-unit
prices.
Maginfra has a scant public profile and
no direct link to Inspur on paper. It is also government-owned, and it is down the
street from Inspur’s headquarters. Corporate records show that the legal representative
of Maginfra’s parent company has held positions at companies
affiliated with Inspur subsidiaries or investment partners.
According to Wirescreen, a data platform, many of the patents that
Maginfra has registered were filed by inventors who have
worked for Inspur. The two firms’ websites also share striking similarities.
When a reporter from The Times visited Maginfra’s
listed address in China on Tuesday, it appeared deserted. A few chairs and empty
desks sat inside a small locked room with no signs. Workers on the floor said they
had not seen anyone use the office, and building receptionists said they had not
heard of Maginfra.
Public filings analyzed by C4ADS, a Washington
research nonprofit, show Chinese universities, some with ties to defense research, seeking and sometimes obtaining servers containing
advanced computer chips built by Maginfra and Inspur.
Maginfra also inked a contract in November
to sell $165 million of high-performance computing technology to a division of a
Chinese state-owned bank, according to a filing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
“It’s very hard to look at this and not see a state-sponsored Chinese
network for bypassing export controls,” said William George, the director of research
at ImportGenius, who analyzed
the trade records.
But the Trump administration approved Maginfra
this year for a license for Nvidia’s less powerful H200 chips, according to documents
viewed by The Times. Reuters previously
reported the license.
The subsidiary Aivres remains very visible
in Silicon Valley. It advertised A.I. servers using AMD’s technology and was listed as an “elite”
partner of Nvidia and a sponsor of its annual conference in San Jose, Calif. (AMD
declined to comment.)
In May, Nvidia announced that Aivres was among the more than two
dozen companies in full-scale production of the servers that would supply its next
generation of A.I. technology.