China’s Ambitious AI Push: 115,000 Nvidia Chips Planned for Western Data Centers, Despite U.S. Export Controls

China's tech giants are reportedly preparing to install over 115,000 Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) AI chips across dozens of data centers in remote provinces such as Xinjiang. A Bloomberg analysis of planning documents highlights Beijing's ambition to build foundational infrastructure for large-scale artificial intelligence systems—comparable to DeepSeek or even OpenAI's models.

But there's a catch: these chips are banned from export to China without a U.S. license. The U.S. first imposed controls in 2022 to restrict the transfer of high-performance GPUs—especially Nvidia's A100 and H100 chips—that are vital to AI research and national defense capabilities.

High Stakes for China's AI Aspirations

This planned chip deployment illustrates President Xi Jinping's strategic focus on AI and core technologies as vehicles for both economic growth and military modernization. However, Bloomberg's investigation raises substantial questions about how China could legally or logistically procure such a massive volume of restricted hardware.

U.S. officials estimate that around 25,000 banned Nvidia chips might be in China—enough for a mid-sized data center. That's far below the scale required for the outlined plan.

The discrepancy between China's ambition and actual chip supply could reflect aspirational policy signaling rather than an executable roadmap—especially with no public explanation on sourcing strategies and increased U.S. scrutiny on secondary exports.

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Nvidia's Role: Still Central, Even Amid Restrictions

Despite the export ban, Nvidia remains the cornerstone of global AI compute—its chips are the preferred choice for training and inference workloads alike. Even unauthorized access to Nvidia chips continues to define the compute backbone of many AI labs worldwide.

The geopolitical implications are substantial. If China succeeds in circumventing export barriers at scale, it could alter the balance of global AI competitiveness. On the other hand, failure to secure supply may slow its progress in foundational model development.

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Conclusion

China's blueprint to centralize over 100,000 Nvidia chips in provinces like Xinjiang is ambitious—and, as of now, implausible without clear sourcing channels. U.S. export controls remain a decisive bottleneck in China's AI infrastructure plans.

While the global chip market continues to wrestle with questions of access and enforcement, investors and policymakers alike are watching closely: the arms race in AI is increasingly becoming a battle over who controls the silicon.