Reuters finds $3.2B in Chinese AI projects naming banned Nvidia chips

A Reuters review published Nov. 13 turned up more than 23 billion yuan — roughly $3.2 billion — in Chinese AI computing projects and equipment agreements that explicitly name Nvidia's restricted H100, H200 and H800 processors. The chips are banned from export to China. The paperwork says buyers are still speccing them anyway.

The biggest single line item is a 6.2 billion yuan ($873 million) AI center in Fujian whose requirements specifically call for H100 processors. In Shaanxi, a 3 billion yuan project tied to state-owned Sinomach lists both H100 and H200 chips. And a facility in Gansu was awarded a 1.16 billion yuan contract in July for 3,072 H100 and H200 processors. Reuters said the activity spans wealthy coastal tech hubs and remote western provinces alike, flagging Fujian, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia and Gansu.

The records Reuters examined split into three categories: planned investments, contracts already awarded, and computing facilities that are up and running. Plans can be aspirational; awarded contracts and live facilities are harder to dismiss. The review did not establish whether the restricted chips were actually delivered to each project — only that Chinese buyers are still designing infrastructure around hardware they aren't supposed to be able to purchase.

Washington began restricting advanced AI chip exports to China in 2022 and has tightened the rules several times since, each round aimed at closing gaps the last one left open. Nvidia has cited regulatory uncertainty as the reason it keeps China data-center revenue out of its forecasts, and has said the controls effectively locked it out of the country's AI data-center market. Yet an IDC estimate cited in the research put Nvidia's share of Chinese AI-accelerator shipments at 34% in the first half of the year.

According to the research, congressional calls for stricter controls are already intensifying, and Reuters flagged mounting US scrutiny as a risk for projects still trying to source the banned hardware. Projects with chip-specific requirements baked into their plans could face delays, redesigns or quiet reassessments if supply looks even less reliable.