Research: Models From Four Chinese AI Labs Show Traces of Restricted NVIDIA Chips

On November 14 that, according to TechCrunch, non-profit research organization Unemployment Labs found after analyzing public model weights that six AI models from DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, and Ant Group display numerical signatures of Nvidia Blackwell chips. The United States has imposed export restrictions on this series of chips to China.

The study covers models including the DeepSeek V4 series and Moonshot AI's Kimi K3. Researchers noted that traces in the weights support the inference that these chips were used for model training, but do not prove the hardware was used throughout the entire training process, nor can they determine the location of the chips, how they were acquired, or whether export controls were violated.