Four Chinese universities, including two with ties to the People’s Liberation Army, purchased Supermicro servers equipped with banned Nvidia A100 AI chips last year.
This is evident from public procurement documents. Exactly how the servers were acquired remains unclear. Two of the institutions involved are Beihang University and the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT). Both are part of China’s so-called “Seven Sons of National Defense,” the institutions that play a key role in aviation and defense research for the military.
The institutions are on the U.S. export blacklist. On March 16 of this year, Beihang announced that it had purchased a machine learning workstation based on a Supermicro system, equipped with four Nvidia A100 chips. HIT previously acquired a system with eight A100s for research into missile, satellite, and robotics technology.
Smuggling case as background
The tenders come weeks after a major legal case. Three individuals associated with Supermicro, including co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw, are suspected of illegally smuggling at least $2.5 billion worth of AI technology to China via Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Supermicro itself has not been named as a suspect. The company claims to be the victim of an organized scheme by the individuals involved.
Two U.S. senators called on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick this week to consider freezing all export licenses for advanced Nvidia AI chips and server systems to China and intermediaries in Southeast Asia.
In addition to the four universities that had already purchased servers, two other Chinese institutions, including one with military ties, attempted to make similar purchases. It has not been confirmed whether these were successfully completed.