Bloomberg: Chinese state-backed firm financed Nvidia Blackwell chip purchase

Source: Bloomberg

According to documents filed with Beijing regulators, a Chinese financing company owned by multiple local government entities provided funding for the purchase of restricted Nvidia chips, indicating state support for what Washington fears is illegal trade fueling China's artificial intelligence development.

Over the past year, Xinxin Financial Leasing Group Co., Ltd. financed the purchase of more than 700 servers for another company, Gosuncn Technology Group Co., Ltd. One contract shows funding for 32 ASUS computer servers equipped with Nvidia B300 chips, purchased from a Chinese company with little publicly available information.

The B300 is part of Nvidia's powerful Blackwell series, and U.S. regulations prohibit its sale to China without explicit licenses. However, the rules have failed to fully stem the flow of these valuable semiconductors. Authorities have accused black-market brokers of smuggling billions of dollars' worth of Nvidia hardware, including Blackwell chips, into China.

The order of 32 servers is relatively small. While hundreds of other servers purchased by Xinxin Leasing meet the specifications for Nvidia Blackwell chips, the documents do not explicitly identify the hardware. Nevertheless, the records point to a key dynamic in the illegal trade: the Chinese government, at least in this case, helped facilitate the transaction.

• China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
• Xinxin Leasing and Gosuncn did not respond to inquiries.
• Nvidia stated it is "investigating this report and will work with our OEM customers to investigate."
• ASUS stated it is "committed to strictly complying with all applicable laws and regulations, including export controls."

Xinxin Leasing was established in 2015 by the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (commonly known as the "Big Fund") to provide financial support for the semiconductor industry. After the Big Fund sold most of its shares in 2020, local governments in Shenzhen, Beijing, and other cities took joint control of the majority of Xinxin Leasing's shares. In recent years, Xinxin Leasing has expanded into data center infrastructure, deploying over 11 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) to "build an AI industry ecosystem covering model training, chips, and more." Its chairman stated the company will "spare no effort to serve and support the national strategy."

Gosuncn, a publicly listed company, has expanded into the AI data center business over the past two years. Its stock price has risen approximately 230% year-to-date. In August 2025, Gosuncn signed its first financial leasing contract with Xinxin Leasing, borrowing 401 million yuan ($60 million) to purchase 171 servers, repayable over 63 months. As of May this year, Gosuncn and its subsidiaries had borrowed over 3 billion yuan from Xinxin Leasing to purchase more than 700 servers. Except for the 32 ASUS hardware units, the chip models for the remaining servers are unknown.

Most of the servers, including the 32 Blackwell systems, are recorded as installed at China Mobile's data center campus in Zhongwei, Ningxia, a city on the edge of the Gobi Desert and one of China's officially designated national computing hubs. China Mobile did not respond to a request for comment.

Bloomberg reviewed the documents in May and June. In late June, Xinxin Leasing resubmitted redacted versions of all documents, removing sensitive information such as server models, specification requirements, supplier names, and hardware locations.

Original article: Bloomberg