32 Restricted B300 Chips Spotted in China Telecom Network
Israeli security firm Lava found thirty-two banned Nvidia GPUs inside a state-owned carrier, prompting the chipmaker to call the leak a minor issue.
By Isabella Morales ·
Thirty-two high-performance chips are hiding where they should not be.
Israeli security firm Lava identified thirty-two Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 GPUs within the network of China Telecom. The state-owned carrier provides telecommunications services across the country. These specific processors are currently barred from export by U.S. regulations. This raises a significant question about how they ended up in a Chinese data center. Typically, these chips are only sold to whitelisted buyers who agree not to send them to sanctioned parties in China.
Export controls have not always stopped the flow of hardware. In 2025, reports indicated that Chinese companies smuggled one billion dollars worth of Nvidia AI chips into the country in just three months. At that time, the B200 was the most sought-after model. However, distributors were already preparing to sell the newer B300 series as soon as it became available. The latest finding confirms that the proliferation of controlled chips into China remains an ongoing challenge.
Nvidia has downplayed the severity of the discovery while not denying the facts. A spokesperson told Tom's Hardware that recent court cases show insignificant diversion of controlled U.S. products. They noted that this amount is less than half of one percent. The company described it as a drop in the bucket compared to the vast domestic compute infrastructure China already possesses. Nvidia argued that with tens of millions of GPUs in service in approved countries, smuggling is a non-factor that governments on both sides of the globe are blocking.
It remains unclear exactly how the B300 chips reached China Telecom’s server racks. Lava cannot confirm their precise location within the company’s network. The firm identified the hardware using Nvidia’s own DCGM Exporter tool. Data center operators install this software to monitor server health and performance. Although designed for internal use, the tool can often be accessed from outside the data center network. It also does not always require password authentication. Nvidia previously confirmed it is working on a tool to locate its chips, but it has not yet been released.
Chinese firms are eager to acquire the Blackwell Ultra B300 for good reason. Announced in March of last year, the data center GPU offers massive performance gains. It features 50% more memory and FP4 compute capability than the previous-generation B200. Nvidia described the chip as built for the age of reasoning, citing sophisticated AI models like DeepSeek R1. The B300 was expected to ship by the end of 2025 and quickly became a hot property.
The drive to secure these chips has led to legal action and corporate changes. In August 2026, nine people were indicted in Taiwan for the illegal export of B300 GPUs to China. This occurred days after Supermicro fired several employees following an investigation into smuggling. The complex process involved a Taiwanese server trading firm called Flying Tiget Tech, which held whitelisted status for GPU purchases. The demand for Nvidia silicon is so intense that prices for older hardware have skyrocketed. A100 servers, which are five years old, have tripled in price and can cost up to $82,000. Some buyers are even retooling gaming GPUs to run AI workloads where possible.
Source: Tom's Hardware
