Amid China's push for domestic AI chip development, major firms like Tencent are seeking to sidestep US export controls by using a rental model that provides access to Nvidia's high-end GPUs.

According to the Financial Times, a key player in this workaround is Japanese neocloud service provider Datasection, which has reportedly signed rental contracts worth over $1.2 billion with Tencent. These contracts grant access to Nvidia B200 AI chips.

Datasection is said to have secured a significant portion of the 15,000 Blackwell processors that Nvidia has made available, positioning the rental model as a critical lifeline for Chinese companies that crave cutting-edge AI technology.

Though the chips are technically unavailable for direct export to China due to US restrictions, the rental setup bypasses that barrier, providing Chinese firms like Tencent with the computational power they need to train sophisticated AI models.

The strategy has become so popular that analysts believe it could soon become the default method for Chinese firms to access top-tier Nvidia hardware.

Even when Nvidia's H200 chips eventually become available to the Chinese market, the Blackwell B200 and B300 AI chips outperform them by a notable margin, keeping China’s AI giants ahead of the game, even under Washington’s restrictions.

With rental compute models now entrenched, Beijing is finding ways to stay plugged into the latest American tech, despite the ongoing geopolitical tensions.