Nvidia B300 Chips Detected in China Telecom Infrastructure by Lava

Israeli security company Lava identified 32 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 processors operating inside the network of China Telecom. The state-owned telecommunications provider hosts the hardware, raising questions about how chips barred by U.S. export controls reached a Chinese data center. The discovery was initially reported by The Information and confirmed by Lava.

Current regulations restrict the sale of this chip class to whitelisted buyers who must agree not to resell to sanctioned parties. Enforcing these rules has proven difficult. A 2025 report estimated that Chinese companies smuggled $1 billion worth of Nvidia AI chips in a three-month period. At that time, B200 processors were the most sought after, though distributors began preparing to handle B300-series parts once they became available.

Nvidia announced the B300 data center GPU in March 2025. The chip offers 50% more memory and FP4 compute capability than the earlier B200. Nvidia described the product as built for the age of reasoning, citing advanced large language models such as DeepSeek R1. The hardware was expected to ship by the end of 2025 and quickly became highly sought after.

Enforcement actions have followed the high demand. In August 2026, nine people were indicted in Taiwan over the illegal export of B300 GPUs to China. These indictments came days after Supermicro confirmed it fired several employees following an investigation into smuggling. The scheme involved a Taiwanese server trading firm called Flying Tiget Tech, which held whitelisted status for GPU purchases.

Nvidia did not dispute Lava's findings but played down their impact. A spokesperson told Tom's Hardware that recent court cases show insignificant diversion of controlled U.S. products, less than half of one percent. The spokesperson noted that tens of millions of GPUs are in service in approved countries, suggesting smuggling is a nonfactor. Lava detected the chips using Nvidia's DCGM Exporter, a monitoring tool that data center operators can install. The software can often be reached from outside the network without a password. Nvidia is developing a tool to locate its chips, but it has not yet been released.

Demand for Nvidia silicon is lifting prices across the market. Servers built around the five-year-old A100 chip have tripled in price. Amid the crackdown on smuggling, some buyers have reportedly retooled gaming GPUs to run AI workloads.

Lava remains unable to determine exactly where in China Telecom's network the 32 chips are located. The path by which the hardware reached the state-owned provider is currently unknown.