Moonshot AI Reported Seeking European Nvidia Blackwell Capacity, Offering Up to 50% More Upfront

Moonshot AI is exploring deals to lease access to clusters of more than 8,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs through European data centers, according to three people familiar with the matter cited by CNBC. The Beijing-based developer of the Kimi models has been talking to neocloud operators that host Nvidia hardware in Europe.

The reported terms are unusually direct: Moonshot would pay 30% to 50% more upfront than a non-Chinese customer for comparable capacity. One source described the company as “very aggressive” in its pursuit of additional computing power. Neoclouds typically lease capacity to offtakers who pay fees plus an upfront amount to lock in a contract.

Two of the sources said Moonshot's interest in European clusters was mainly for inference, the work of running trained models to serve users, while one source said capacity for model training was also under discussion. Together, those two needs point to sustained production capacity rather than a one-off experiment.

The talks have a clear starting point. In July the White House said the Chinese lab had accessed Nvidia Blackwell chips through a facility in Thailand, and discussions about European capacity began after that allegation surfaced. Moonshot, Nvidia, the White House, the US Commerce Department, China's embassy in the UK and its foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

For European operators, the higher upfront payment is less a premium than a risk buffer. If remote-access arrangements are restricted later, someone has to absorb the loss, which is why Chinese customers paying more in advance look attractive — and that is precisely the loophole US lawmakers want closed.

Demand is the other half of the story. After releasing a new model in July, Moonshot said demand had stretched its available capacity and forced it to pause new subscriptions, promising to reopen spots in batches as it adds compute. For a model developer, available capacity sets how many users it can actually serve.

Washington has already moved partway. The House passed the bipartisan Remote Access Security Act in January, which would extend export controls to cloud-based access to critical hardware, but the Senate has not taken it up. The House Select Committee on China urged Congress to finish the job, saying Chinese labs leasing advanced chips from US and European companies circumvents export controls. Nvidia has reportedly told cloud providers that at least 51% of their services must go to non-Chinese customers, according to the Financial Times, while a company spokesperson argued that if the world's clouds run on foreign chips, the model and application layers will be foreign-built too.

Restricting where advanced chips can be shipped may not be enough if companies can still rent the same hardware from abroad. Three things to watch: whether the Senate takes up RASA, whether European clouds and their financiers actually sign such contracts, and how Nvidia's 51% customer-mix requirement is enforced in individual leases.