BEIJING, December 21, 2025 – Tencent has secured use of Nvidia’s high-performance Blackwell AI chips—subject to U.S. export bans in China—through a rental deal with Japanese cloud provider Datasection, exploiting a gap in sanctions that permits access via overseas compute resources.
The agreement, worth more than $1.2 billion, provides Tencent with substantial capacity from Datasection’s 15,000 Blackwell processors, hosted mainly in Japan and Australia. An intermediary facilitates the transaction, allowing Tencent to train AI models without direct ownership or importation of the restricted hardware.
U.S. rules bar sales of Nvidia’s flagship Blackwell series, including B200 and B300 chips, to China over concerns about military applications. However, renting cloud services from foreign providers remains permissible, creating what analysts term a regulatory loophole.
Bernstein’s Lin Qingyuan observed that even if less-restricted chips like the H200 become available in China, Blackwell’s superior capabilities make offshore rentals appealing.
Similar tactics are employed by other Chinese companies, such as Alibaba and ByteDance, which conduct training abroad and deploy results domestically. The strategy supports China’s AI ambitions despite domestic hardware constraints, with firms like Huawei advancing alternatives like the Ascend series in a $50 billion market.
Datasection has shifted focus to AI cloud services, benefiting from demand for unrestricted access to cutting-edge GPUs. Nvidia has not commented on the deal but continues supplying compliant models to China while facing revenue impacts from broader curbs.
The arrangement follows President Trump’s approval of H200 exports to select Chinese buyers with U.S. revenue sharing, indicating selective policy adjustments. Blackwell, however, remains prohibited for direct sales, heightening debate over rental models as evasion routes.
As U.S.-China tech rivalry intensifies, such deals challenge the efficacy of export controls, prompting calls for tighter oversight of cloud-based access without stifling global innovation.
