White House Accuses Moonshot AI of Illegally Using Restricted Nvidia GB300 Chips for Kimi K3 Model

White House officials, on Wednesday (July 22), accused Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI of illegally using restricted Nvidia GB300 chips and American AI model outputs to develop the Kimi K3 model announced last week. Michael Kratsios, director of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said Moonshot AI obtained servers equipped with GB300 chips and likely used them in Thailand to train the model, potentially violating U.S. export controls.

GB300 is part of Nvidia's restricted Blackwell generation, prohibited for sale to Chinese companies. Kratsios also alleged Moonshot AI built internal systems to systematically extract capabilities from American AI models through model distillation, a technique using outputs from stronger teacher models to train smaller student models. The U.S. Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security reiterated in May that sales of advanced processors to Chinese enterprises remain restricted, even if located overseas.