State-linked Chinese entities are using cloud services provided by Amazon or its rivals to access advanced U.S. chips and artificial intelligence capabilities that they cannot acquire otherwise, recent public tender documents showed. The U.S. government has restricted the export of high-end AI chips to China over the past two years, citing the need to limit the Chinese military’s capabilities. Providing access to such chips or advanced AI models through the cloud, however, is not a violation of U.S. regulations since only exports or transfers of a commodity, software or technology are regulated. A Reuters review of more than 50 tender documents posted over the past year on publicly available Chinese databases showed that at least 11 Chinese entities have sought access to restricted U.S. technologies or cloud services. Among those, four explicitly named Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a cloud service provider, though they accessed the services through Chinese intermediary companies rather than from AWS directly. The tender documents, which Reuters is the first to report on, show the breadth of strategies Chinese entities are employing to secure advanced computing power and access generative AI models. They also underscore how U.S. companies are capitalising on China’s growing demand for computing power. “AWS complies with all applicable U.S. laws, including trade laws, regarding the provision of AWS services inside and outside of China,” a spokesperson for Amazon’s cloud business said. AWS controls nearly a third of the global cloud infrastructure market, according to research firm Canalys. In China, AWS is the sixth-largest cloud service provider, according to research firm IDC. Shenzhen University spent 200,000 yuan ($27,996) on an AWS account to gain access to cloud servers powered by Nvidia A100 and H100 chips for an unspecified project, according to a March tender document. It got this service via an intermediary, Yunda Technology Ltd Co, the document showed.
Full exclusive : Chinese entities turn to Amazon cloud and its rivals to access high-end US chips, AI.
