The Chinese military said they wanted to use the Nvidia AI chip on a wide range of projects, from servers running the most powerful models of Chinese startup Deepseek to 33-pound “robot dogs” with high-resolution cameras, according to a document reviewed by Business Insider.
BI reviewed records regarding the official procurement portal of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA). There, military units posted thousands of requests for equipment that local contractors could bid.
Multiple requests over the past year refer to both banning and allowing NVIDIA hardware, including H20 chips, which the US has been configured to loosen export controls.
An Nvidia spokesperson told BI that China has “sufficient” domestic tips for all military applications.
“Purchase a small number of older products to test US competition is not a national security concern,” the spokesman said. “Using products restricted to military applications is a non-starter with no support, software or maintenance.”
While the Chinese military is trying to buy Nvidia hardware, chipmakers face pressure from other parts of the Chinese government, which has long supported efforts to build domestic alternatives.
On Thursday, China's internet regulators said they had summoned the company to explain alleged backdoor security risks for the H20 chip, claiming Nvidia denied it, Reuters reported.
How Chinese military wants to use Nvidia chips
Military projects reviewed by BI are typically aimed at servers for running AI models for unspecified purposes, similar to those built by Deepseek.
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Three requests released this April are the calls for banned Nvidia chips to power such servers. It requires at least eight H20 cards from a system that can run one of DeepSeek's biggest and most powerful models, the DeepSeek-R1 671B, at full capacity.
The other is tied to an “intelligent decision-making” support system that allows you to run DeepSeek, and four RTX 6000 graphics cards are also prohibited. The contract is not finalized, but the supplier was tentatively selected in June. Deepseek did not respond to requests for comment.
Another server request from the same month calls for an H100 graphics card that will be responsible for exports to China after 2022, which costs tens of thousands of dollars. The list specifies that the card must be delivered to the original package and installed onsite. Another AI server request released in July 2024 also requires an H100 GPU.
The Chinese military doesn't just want AI servers.
For example, one project in April shows a military unit requesting a 33-pound “robot dog” with Nvidia Jetson computing modules as part of an unspecified training project. This particular request will be cancelled later and the Jetson module is not prohibited from being exported to China for most use cases.
It is unclear whether the Chinese military actually acquired these chips or whether the projects listed in the procurement records reflect true use. Ryan Fedasiuk, a former State Department advisor on China's technology policy, says the Chinese military has many ways to get them.
“There are enough cutouts, subsidiaries and shell companies that PLA can be used to illegally procure chips from American companies, including Nvidia,” he told BI.
Nvidia plans to sell H20 chips again to China
Some national security policymakers and experts have expressed concern about making it easier for China to get some Nvidia chips.
20 of them wrote to the Commerce Department on Monday, urging the US to reimpose the H20 ban, saying that Chip “supports Chinese troops.”
“This reversal will certainly open the floodgates,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the Democracy Foundation, who co-signed the letter.
The Commerce Department told BI that the current administration has strengthened its control over its predecessor.
“The Trump administration is carefully considering its H20 license application, accounting for both the benefits and costs of potential exports from the United States, and taking into account the views of US government experts,” a commercial spokesperson said.
“No one can beat Nvidia.”
Fedasiuk reviewed some of the records found by BI, saying that the Chinese military wants to use the best possible hardware and would like to use domestic chips that Huawei will not cut it.
“No one can beat Nvidia in terms of pure processing power that a particular chip can withstand. Huawei is not approaching,” Fedasiuk said.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has downplayed such concerns and said that China's military doesn't want to rely on US technology.
“They simply can't rely on that,” fans said of CNN in July.
“Of course, it could be restricted at any time.”
China's Ministry of Defense, which represents the PLA, did not respond to a request for comment.
