The Chinese AI model "Kimi K2" - wait, the Chinese AI model that once shook the U.S. stock market, "Kimi K3."

Revelations have emerged that the foundation of Moonshot AI, the company behind this model, relied on 20,000 U.S. NVIDIA chips.

Bloomberg reported that Moonshot AI has a computing contract with Alibaba involving approximately 20,000 NVIDIA chips.

These chips are known to account for a significant portion of the total computing power Moonshot uses to train and operate the Kimi model.

The chips in question belong to NVIDIA's previous-generation "Hopper" lineup, with multiple sources pointing specifically to the H200, the most powerful among them.

According to U.S. officials, while exporting the H200 to China requires U.S. government export licenses, the actual volume brought in with proper authorization is extremely small.

Alibaba pushed back fiercely, stating that "claims regarding H200 supplies are entirely groundless."

However, it did not deny the fact that it provided 20,000 NVIDIA chips, nor did it clarify what kind of chips they were.

Alibaba is one of Moonshot's largest investors and has been directing its portfolio companies to use its cloud services.

The U.S. White House believes Moonshot did not stop there.

Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, publicly criticized on June 22 that Moonshot unlawfully secured NVIDIA's latest Blackwell chips, which are banned from being sold to China.

Blackwell is the most powerful AI accelerator in existence.

Kratsios claimed that Moonshot accessed Blackwell-equipped servers in Thailand and likely used them to train its AI model.

Suspicion has also been raised that Moonshot copied Anthropic's top-tier model through a "distillation" method.

In February, Anthropic revealed that Moonshot AI mobilized false accounts to conduct over 3.4 million questions and answers, engaging in so-called "adversarial distillation" to copy the AI's patterns.

[Tarun Chhabra / Anthropic Head of National Security : The model distillation problem is real. I think it narrows America's technological edge. We are currently blocking millions of accounts every week that facilitate this kind of distillation.]

The Chinese government expressed its opposition to politicizing and instrumentalizing trade and technology issues.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that foreign AI models confirmed to have been created using technology stolen from U.S. companies could face sanctions.

Reported by Kim, Soo Hyung | Video by Na Hong-hee | Graphics by Lee Jung-joo | Produced by SBS Digital News