Report Finds Nvidia B300 Chips Inside China Telecom Network

Export controls are meant to keep high-powered computer chips out of China, but a new report suggests some are getting through anyway. An Israeli security firm says it has located dozens of Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 processors inside the network of China Telecom, a state-owned company. These specific chips are barred from sale to most Chinese buyers by U.S. rules. The U.S. government only permits them to be sold to a small list of approved buyers who promise not to send them to China or other restricted countries. The discovery raises questions about how these powerful processors ended up in a Chinese data center.

The security firm, named Lava, says it identified 32 of the restricted chips within China Telecom's system. This is not the first time such chips have been found in China. Reports from 2025 showed that Chinese companies had smuggled $1 billion worth of Nvidia AI chips into the country over a three-month period. At that time, the most sought-after item was the B200 chip. However, distributors were already preparing to sell the newer B300-series chips, which are now available.

Nvidia has responded to the report but did not deny the findings. A spokesperson for the company said that investigations by governments and other groups have found very little diversion of controlled U.S. products. The spokesperson said, "Governments, researchers, and media have all found insignificant diversion of controlled US products, less than one half of one percent in recent court cases - a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of domestic compute China already has." The company also stated that with millions of its chips in use in approved countries, smuggling is not a major factor.

It is not known how the B300 chips reached China Telecom's server racks, and Lava cannot confirm where in the network they are located. The firm identified them by using Nvidia's own DCGM Exporter software. This tool is designed to monitor server health for internal use but is sometimes accessible from outside a data center's network. Nvidia previously announced it was creating a tool to locate its chips, but that software has not been released.

Chinese companies are eager to obtain the B300 chip. The processor was announced in March 2025 and is one of the most powerful data center GPUs available. It offers significantly more performance than the previous B200 model, with 50% more memory and higher compute capabilities. Nvidia described the chip as "built for the age of reasoning." The chip is also involved in other smuggling cases. In August 2026, nine people were indicted in Taiwan for illegally exporting B300 GPUs to China, and Supermicro fired several employees after an investigation into smuggling.