Export Controls: 32 Nvidia B300 Chips Detected in China Telecom Infrastructure

Israeli security firm Lava announced on Thursday that it identified 32 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 chips running inside the network of China Telecom. The state-owned telecommunications provider operates the infrastructure for the finding, which was first reported by The Information, raises questions about how hardware barred by U.S. export controls entered a Chinese data center.

Current regulations restrict sales of this chip class to whitelisted buyers who agree not to pass them to sanctioned parties, including those in China. Enforcement has proven difficult. A 2025 report stated that Chinese companies smuggled $1 billion worth of Nvidia AI chips in three months. While B200 processors were the primary target then, distributors were already preparing for the B300 series.

Nvidia did not dispute the findings but minimized their impact. A spokesperson told Tom's Hardware that recent court cases show "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 spokesperson added that with tens of millions of GPUs in service in approved countries, the report "demonstrates that smuggling is a nonfactor, blocked by governments on both sides of the globe."

Lava detected the chips using Nvidia's own DCGM Exporter, a tool for monitoring server health. Although intended for internal use, the software is often accessible from outside the data center without a password. Lava could not determine the exact location of the chips within China Telecom's network. Nvidia has confirmed it is developing a tool to locate its chips, but that software has not yet been released.

The B300 offers 50% more memory and FP4 compute than the earlier B200. Nvidia announced the data center GPU in March 2025 and described it as "built for the age of reasoning" for sophisticated large language models. The chip was expected to ship by the end of 2025 and became highly sought after.

Enforcement actions have intensified. In August 2026, nine people were indicted in Taiwan for the illegal export of B300 GPUs to China. These indictments followed days after Supermicro fired several employees following an investigation into smuggling. The scheme involved a Taiwanese server trading firm called Flying Tiget Tech, which held whitelisted status for GPU purchases.

Demand for Nvidia silicon has lifted prices across the market. Servers built around the five-year-old A100 have tripled in price. Amid the crackdown, some buyers have reportedly retooled gaming GPUs to run AI workloads.