Key facts
- Unemployment Labs analyzed the weights of open-weight models from DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, MiniMax and Ant Group.
- The research found fingerprints of Blackwell training in Moonshot's Kimi K3 releases and DeepSeek's V4 models.
- Epoch AI estimates about two million advanced chips entered China in 2024 and 2025 through schemes hiding their destination.
- Epoch AI estimates 275,000 Nvidia AI accelerators were imported to Malaysia in 2024 and 2025.
- Culper alleged in May that Megaspeed's relationship with Nvidia tied a significant share of Nvidia revenue to Chinese demand.
Unemployment Labs, a nonprofit research group led by former OpenAI researcher Will DePue, said on November 13, 2026 that it had analyzed the weights of open-weight large language models released by DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, MiniMax and Ant Group. The weights, the unique structure of a model, still reflect the configuration of the chips used to train it, and DePue said he found compelling evidence that Moonshot's Kimi K3 releases and DeepSeek's V4 models bear fingerprints from training on Nvidia Blackwell GPUs.
Blackwell GPUs are barred from export to China or Chinese-owned firms under US rules. The research does not establish that the models were trained entirely on Nvidia chips or that export control laws were violated, because the chips could have been in an offshore data center, a route Chinese firms have used to access compute. Epoch AI, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that about two million advanced chips entered China in 2024 and 2025 through schemes designed to hide their final destination, and that 275,000 Nvidia AI accelerators were imported to Malaysia in 2024 and 2025.
White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios said earlier this year that Moonshot had used export-banned Nvidia chips, citing US intelligence sources. Sam Bresnick, a researcher at the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told TechCrunch that allowing Chinese companies to access chips in Malaysia while barring mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau made little sense if the goal is to protect the US technology edge.
Megaspeed, led by Alice Huang, has been at the center of that trade for several years through its subsidiary Speedmatrix and has been the subject of investigations by the US and Singaporean governments, according to the report. Bloomberg reported on Friday that a company with links to Alice Huang was involved in smuggling banned Nvidia chips to a data center in Shanghai.