China's Kimi K3 was reportedly trained on smuggled NVIDIA Blackwell chips — around both countries' controls

Moonshot AI's frontier model, the biggest open-weight model ever, was allegedly trained on NVIDIA Blackwell hardware acquired around both US export… Aliteq Lena Fischer · AI & Local Compute Editor

Kimi K3 was allegedly trained on NVIDIA Blackwell — the latest generation, barred from export to China.

Acquired around both sets of controls — US export restrictions and China's own import rules.

It's the biggest open-weight model ever (2.8T parameters) — and genuinely capable.

Implication: compute export controls are leaking, and smuggling networks are supplying frontier training.

Reframes 'China caught up' — access to restricted hardware may be a bigger factor than assumed.

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