Nvidia, the California-based designer of AI chips, didn’t become the world’s most valuable company on its own. On its website, it lists almost 1,000 firms as partners, including more than 120 in China.

Since 2022 at least 23 Chinese companies that Nvidia names as partners have won bids to supply universities, companies and labs that the U.S. has added to the Entity List for their ties to China’s military, according to a review of procurement records. 

These include five of the seven schools known as “China’s Seven Sons of National Defense”; subsidiaries of three of China’s largest defense contractors; and a unit of the People’s Liberation Army itself.

The records did not show that each of the deals included Nvidia products, though some tenders explicitly solicited Nvidia chips or those that matched Nvidia specifications. The average contract awarded to an Nvidia partner by an Entity List or military-affiliated entity was worth around 1.7 million yuan (~$250,000). 

The records raise questions about how Nvidia vets its partners in China, as well as how much control it has over who can access its technology in the country.

“Nvidia should be doing more due diligence,” says Ryan Fedasiuk, a former technology adviser at the State Department’s China office. “It is incumbent on American companies doing business in China, especially technology companies, to make sure that they know where their products are going and that they aren’t being misused for military or intelligence end uses.”

The deals also underscore how parts of China’s defense base are still interested in buying products containing Nvidia technology, despite Chinese regulators’ concerns that the company’s chips could pose security risks.

And even if Nvidia is not selling directly to the PLA, its products appear to be playing a role in Chinese military modernization, says Sam Bresnick, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology who has studied Chinese military procurement. “There’s more we can do to limit the flows of these technologies into China.”

Nvidia did not respond to questions about the due diligence that it conducts on its partners in China or whether it was aware that around a fifth of them had sought to supply Entity List or PLA-affiliated entities.

“Companies are always free to join Nvidia’s ‘partner network’ and promote our ecosystem, but that does not mean they receive products from us,” a spokesperson says. “The U.S. government has strictly controlled sales to China since 2022, and today China has millions of domestic chips, more than enough for every military use.”

The spokesperson declined to comment further.

Liu Chang, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said the U.S. had used the pretext of national security to unfairly blacklist Chinese companies. “China supports lawful business cooperation between companies. We firmly oppose the U.S.’ overstretching the concept of national security.”

The White House and the Department of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment.

NVIDIA PARTNERS AND CHINA’S MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Nvidia partners that have won bids to supply universities, companies and labs on the U.S. Entity List, subsidiaries of sanctioned defense contractors, and redacted entities since 2022. Only two suppliers, Guangzhou Henglian Computer Technology Co Ltd and Shandong Yiran Information Technology Co Ltd, responded to requests for comment. Hover over their names to see their statements. The remainder did not respond or could not be reached.

Redacted entities are purchasers whose names were concealed in official procurement data, which generally signifies a sensitive, state-controlled organization.

NVIDIA’S CHINA PARTNERS LIST

Export controls imposed by the Biden administration have restricted Nvidia from selling its most advanced chips to China since 2022. The Trump administration has loosened them somewhat. The U.S. now allows Nvidia to sell its H200 chip, which had been export controlled since 2023, to licensed customers in China. Nvidia’s more advanced Blackwell chips remain controlled.

While Beijing has blocked its companies from importing H200s, a small number of H200 sales to China have gone through, Jeffrey Kessler, the Commerce Department’s Under Secretary for Industry and Security, said in congressional testimony on July 14. 

The controls have never applied to Nvidia’s lower-end hardware, which the company distributes through a network of partners. Some integrate Nvidia technology into their own products.

Nvidia has maintained a partner network for at least the last decade, according to press releases and archived versions of its website. As the company’s activities in China attract growing scrutiny from policymakers — and after the co-founder of Supermicro was indicted and charged with chip smuggling — its list of Chinese partner firms has taken on new relevance. Supermicro is one of Nvidia’s U.S. partners.

It is incumbent on American companies doing business in China, especially technology companies, to make sure that they know where their products are going and that they aren’t being misused for military or intelligence end uses.

Ryan Fedasiuk, a former technology adviser at the State Department’s China office

Nvidia divides its partners into several categories, including distributor, original equipment manufacturer (OEM), and cloud partner. It has more “solution provider” partners in China — firms that the company says “primarily operate as value-added resellers, which may include integration of NVIDIA products, solutions, and technologies directly to end customers” — than any other category.

Around a third of Nvidia’s partners in China were founded in the past decade. The youngest partner, Apex AI Computing (Beijing) Electronic Manufacturing Co, describes itself as a provider of AI servers. WireScreen shows that it was registered in February of this year and counts Teamsun, a publicly listed cloud computing company based in Beijing, as its largest indirect shareholder.

Another relatively new Nvidia partner, Changkuai Computing Information Industry (Beijing) Co Ltd, says on its website that it was founded in 2023. But the company’s internet content provider number, issued by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, is registered to Hygon Information Technology, a chip company that lists the same ICP number on its own site. The U.S. added Hygon and its top shareholder, Sugon, to the Entity List in 2019 for “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.” The U.S. later accused Sugon of building supercomputers for the PLA.

Changkuai has applied for ten patents since last August, according to a Chinese government database. Each of the patents has the same three names on them: Chen Yong, Deng Jianting, and Chen Ying. The same three names appear on patents filed by Sugon. They also appear on patents filed by Nettrix, a server manufacturer founded by former Sugon executives in 2019. On their websites, Changkuai and Nettrix use almost identical phrasing to market their servers. The U.S. added Nettrix to the Entity List in 2025 for developing supercomputers and providing “significant manufacturing capabilities” to Sugon.

Changkuai, Hygon, Sugon and Nettrix did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Chinese government entities hold stakes of more than 10 percent in at least 17 of Nvidia’s partners in China, according to corporate records collated by WireScreen. 

One such partner is ZTE, the Shenzhen-based telecom giant long subject to U.S. government trade restrictions. Another is Maginfra, which is owned by a government-run asset manager in Jinan, capital of China’s eastern Shandong province. Reuters reported earlier this month that both Maginfra and a unit of ZTE had won licenses to purchase the H200, citing documents and unnamed sources. 

ZTE did not respond to a request for comment. Maginfra could not be reached for comment. 

Maginfra is a newly created firm that was registered in February 2025, WireScreen shows. In November, it signed a 1.1 billion yuan ($162 million) deal to supply a publicly listed arm of the China Development Bank with IT equipment, according to a securities filing.

On its website, Maginfra lists its address as an office complex in Jinan. A subsidiary of Jinan-based tech firm Inspur, which has previously partnered with Nvidia, has listed an address that is within the same complex. A third Nvidia partner, Xiamen Yuanchou Intelligent Computing Technology Co., Ltd, registered an office there last April, WireScreen shows. 

In business registration paperwork filed with Chinese regulators, Xiamen Yuanchou, which goes by Rithmax, listed phone numbers that are also used by other subsidiaries of Inspur, according to WireScreen. Rithmax markets four of its servers using the same language that Inspur uses to market its own products. And at least 22 inventors named on Rithmax’s patent applications share names with inventors on patents filed by another Inspur subsidiary.

Nvidia and Inspur, one of the world’s largest makers of servers, began partnering as early as 2009. “Inspur is a fantastic company to work with,” Ian Buck, the general manager of Nvidia’s data center business, said in 2018.

The partnership appeared poised to grow even larger as the debut of chatbots in 2022 sparked massive demand for AI servers. “Inspur is one of Nvidia’s most strategic server partners globally,” Raymond Teh, an Nvidia vice president, said that year.

But then, in 2023, the U.S. accused Inspur of supporting China’s military modernization and added it to the Entity List, restricting Nvidia from selling the firm its chips. Last year, the New York Times reported that a California subsidiary of Inspur had exported Nvidia chips to a Singaporean company that was under U.S. investigation for allegedly helping Chinese firms bypass export controls.

Nvidia does not currently list Inspur as a partner on its website.

Rithmax and Inspur did not respond to requests for comment. Nvidia did not respond to questions about how it vetted Maginfra or Rithmax or about its current relationship with Inspur.

Nvidia Partner	Government Beneficial Ownership	Selected Major Investors
China National Instruments Import & Export Group Corp.	100%	Genertec
Maginfra Co Ltd	100%	Jinan local government
Qihang Zhiqing Information Technology (Beijing) Co Ltd	100%	Shenzhen local government funds
Xiamen Yuanchou Intelligent Computing Technology Co., Ltd	100%	Xiamen local government funds
Shenzhen CECport Technologies Co Ltd	49.1%	China Electronics Corporation ⛔
xFusion Digital Technologies Co Ltd	41%	China Mobile ⛔
China Greatwall Technology Group Co Ltd	40.6%	China Electronics Corporation ⛔
KylinSoft Corporation	35.8%	China National Software & Service Company Limited
Tsinghua Tongfang Co Ltd	34.1%	China National Nuclear Corporation ⛔
Apulis Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd	19.4%	Shenzhen, Shanghai local government funds
Shenzhen Powerleader Computer System Co Ltd	18%	Leshan local government funds
Beijing Linktel HPC Technology Ltd	15.6%	County governments in Hebei and Shandong provinces
Beijing MiiVii Dynamics Tech Co., Ltd.	13.9%	Ningbo local government funds
Guangzhou GRG Wuzhou Technology Co Ltd	13.3%	GRGBanking Equipment Company
ZTE Corporation	12.9%	China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation ⛔
SZ Sensing Tech Co	12.7%	Shenzhen local government funds
LCFC (Hefei) Electronics Technology Co., Ltd.	11.4%	Lenovo, Hefei municipal government

PARTNER PROBLEMS

Some of Nvidia’s privately-owned partners advertise their connections to both the Silicon Valley-based chip giant and China’s military-industrial complex. 

SinoInfo, an authorized Nvidia reseller based in Beijing, labels itself an “Nvidia elite partner” next to its own logo on its website. Nvidia says that “elite partners represent the deepest level of partnership with NVIDIA and demonstrate the highest level of commitment to the partnership.”

On its website, SinoInfo posted a letter from John Leggio, an Nvidia executive, granting it approval to sell Nvidia data center products in mainland China. The letter says that the arrangement is subject to “restrictions on destinations, end-users and end-use.”

Just below the letter, SinoInfo lists its own partners. Among them are China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) and China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

CASIC is one of the largest manufacturers of missiles in China. CASC is focused on spacecraft but also produces missiles. CASC owns the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), which designs and makes satellites.

“CAST and CASIC are core elements of China’s defense-industrial base,” says Brendan Mulvaney, director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute at the Air Force’s Air University. “While neither organization exercises operational control over military capabilities, both play an indispensable role in equipping the PLA with advanced aerospace, missile, and space-based systems.”

SinoInfo, which says it has been an Nvidia elite partner since 2022, did not respond to a request for comment.

Nvidia did not respond to questions about how it vetted SinoInfo or whether it was aware that SinoInfo listed Chinese defense contractors as its partners.

SinoInfo is not the only Nvidia partner tied to companies and universities that form parts of China’s defense sector. Procurement records show that in 2024 Shanghai Pusai Electronics Co, which disclosed that year that it had just 13 employees and made 78 million yuan (around $11.5 million) in revenue, won a bid to supply a computer workstation to a PLA unit under the Academy of Military Sciences. The contract was worth 90,000 yuan (around $12,500). 

Nvidia describes Shanghai Pusai Electronics Co as a “solution provider” partner specializing in “compute.” Nvidia says it gives this designation to companies that provide Nvidia computing platforms. 

Last year, Shanghai Pusai said on its website that it makes AI servers compatible with Nvidia A100 and H100 chips, both of which were export-controlled at the time.

The procurement records do not indicate whether Shanghai Pusai fulfilled the PLA contract or whether the arrangement included technology made by Nvidia. 

Nvidia did not respond to questions about how it vetted Shanghai Pusai or whether it was aware of these contracts. Shanghai Pusai did not respond to a request for comment.

Previous studies suggest that the People’s Liberation Army has been seeking to acquire Nvidia chips. A recent report by WireScreen analyzed more than 3,800 military procurement records. The research found that the PLA had attempted to acquire Nvidia’s A100 and A800 chips hundreds of times between 2019 and 2025. There is no evidence that Nvidia was aware of those attempts.

Shandong Yiran Information Technology Co Ltd, another Nvidia partner, won contracts to supply the PLA’s Naval Aviation University in 2020 as well as an unnamed military unit in 2021 and an unnamed university — often a marker of a military school — in Qingdao in 2022, according to procurement records. A company spokesperson told The Wire that none of the deals included Nvidia products. 

The spokesperson added that Nvidia rules prevent Shandong Yiran, which offers Nvidia chips on its website, from selling Nvidia products to companies on a Commerce Department blacklist: “Our company strictly abides by the ban measures of Nvidia and the U.S. government in the process of operation, and will not sell related products to customers on the ban list. Our company has also signed corresponding agreements with Nvidia in accordance with legal terms.”

Since 2022, four other Nvidia partners have won contracts to supply subsidiaries of CASC and Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), another defense contractor, according to procurement records.

The records show that another 19 Nvidia partners have won bids to supply five of the so-called Seven Sons of National Defense universities — or guofang qizi in Chinese. 

“These universities are direct feeder schools for China’s defense industry and military apparatus,” says Fedasiuk, who has published research on the employment of Seven Sons graduates.

Many U.S. universities restrict collaboration with these schools — and sometimes with their alumni as well. A graduate of Beijing-based Beihang University, one of the Seven Sons universities, told The Wire that his federally funded PhD offer from the University of Illinois was revoked because of his tie to Beihang. (He instead secured admission to a U.S. master’s program at another university before ultimately obtaining a PhD there.)

THE SEVEN SONS OF NATIONAL DEFENSE

School	Year Founded	Location	% of Employed Graduates Working at Chinese Defense Contractors (2019)	Date Added to U.S. Entity List
Northwestern Polytechnical University	1938	Xi’an	26%	May 2001
Beihang University	1952	Beijing	24%	May 2001
Harbin Engineering University	1953	Harbin	24%	June 2020
Beijing Institute of Technology	1940	Beijing	17%	December 2020
Harbin Institute of Technology	1920	Harbin	13%	June 2020
Nanjing University of Science and Technology	1953	Nanjing	13%	December 2020
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics	1952	Nanjing	N/A	December 2020

Procurement records show that one Nvidia partner, Amax Information Technologies (Suzhou) Co, won bids to supply servers to four out of the seven schools: Beihang, Harbin Institute of Technology, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and Northwestern Polytechnical University.

Between 2023 and this month, Amax won more than 7 million yuan ($1 million) worth of contracts from the four universities. The largest was a 3.25 million yuan ($480,000) bid to supply Nanjing University Of Science And Technology with servers containing chips that match Nvidia specifications.

The records do not indicate whether Amax Information Technologies (Suzhou) fulfilled the contracts.

Amax Information Technologies (Suzhou) Co is a subsidiary of a publicly traded company in Taiwan that says it is headquartered in Fremont, California. The parent firm describes itself as an elite Nvidia partner that became one of the Silicon Valley firm’s recommended suppliers in 2008.

A U.S.-based representative for Amax said she could not answer questions about the contracts and directed The Wire to Amax’s China team, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Nvidia did not respond to questions about Amax.

Each of the Seven Sons schools is on the U.S. Entity List over concerns about their links to the PLA.

The universities could not be reached for comment.

Companies cannot export goods from the U.S. to firms or universities on the Entity List without a license from the Commerce Department, and those licenses are met with a presumption of denial. 

“If it was made in or shipped from the U.S. — if it’s a toothbrush or server — license required, license denied,” says Kevin Wolf, an export controls lawyer at Akin Gump in Washington.

Companies in China can legally sell some Nvidia products to universities on the Entity List, but only if they are made outside the U.S., fall below certain technological thresholds, and do not contain too many export-controlled inputs. In 2023, analysts at Georgetown’s CSET estimated that at least 27 Nvidia products do not require a license for sale in China. 

MARCHING ORDERS

In March 2013, just a few months after being appointed head of the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese leader Xi Jinping told a PLA delegation that China had to advance its efforts of “military-civilian integration.” Two years later, this goal was formally declared a national strategy.

“This has been a priority [of Xi’s] from the start,” says Tyler Jost, an expert on Chinese politics at Brown University.

The military-civil fusion policy has made it increasingly difficult to identify how universities and companies that serve both commercial and defense interests plan to use a given product. Most of the procurement records reviewed by The Wire do not indicate how the buyers will use the requested items. 

The Seven Sons universities illustrate this dilemma. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which oversees a department aimed at promoting military-civil fusion, also helps fund the Seven Sons schools and has a role in appointing their personnel. One procurement request by Northwestern Polytechnical University, based in Xi’an, solicited servers (containing chips that match Nvidia specifications) that could process data collected by drones. 

The Seven Sons universities are not military academies. The Beihang graduate now teaching in the U.S. said most of his classmates were simply interested in getting good jobs, rather than in serving China’s military or defense industry.

“Is the university related to defense? Does it have some contracts with the military? Absolutely yes,” he said. “What’s the fraction? It’s a small amount.”

He compared it to any American university where Defense Department-funded researchers work on classified projects: “Lockheed Martin and Raytheon will come here and in China AVIC will hire students to do military work — it’s the same.”

But as in so many other areas, experts say that what sets China apart is its political system.

Restricting direct military sales alone may be insufficient when advanced computing technologies are distributed through commercial channels operating within China’s integrated military-civil fusion system.

Brendan Mulvaney, director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute at the Air Force’s Air University

While governments around the world leverage academic research in their pursuit of national security goals, the Party exercises unique control over universities, says Jost.

“That’s a step-function difference between the United States and China,” he adds. “The Party is what unites everything within China.”

As a result, U.S. policymakers should consider the “broader commercial ecosystem” when formulating export controls, says Mulvaney, at Air University.

“The principal national security concern is not necessarily that Nvidia conducts business directly with China’s defense-industrial enterprises,” he says. “Restricting direct military sales alone may be insufficient when advanced computing technologies are distributed through commercial channels operating within China’s integrated military-civil fusion system.”

Noah Berman is a staff writer for The Wire based in New York. He previously wrote about economics and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe and PBS News. He graduated from Georgetown University.