Export controls
The Blackwell servers that reached ByteDance came through a 33 per cent stake
Aivres, one-third owned by blacklisted Inspur, shipped over $3 billion of Nvidia Blackwell systems that reached ByteDance and Alibaba, the New York Times reported. The Sunday investigation traced $5.6 billion of technology from the California server maker into Southeast Asia between April 2024 and February 2026, the Blackwell systems more than half of it. The route is the rule’s arithmetic: Inspur has been on the Entity List since 2023 and the 50 per cent Affiliates Rule BIS launched in September 2025 does not reach a 33 per cent holding. Nvidia spokesman John Rizzo said the company does not support diversion, and on the Times’s account it did not need to. The paper’s verdict: nothing changes for a builder until BIS names Aivres, which it did not do when it listed six other Inspur subsidiaries in March 2025 without naming it.
What it changes Nothing to do this week. The number to watch is whether BIS names Aivres before the mid-September US-China talks; until it does, the Blackwell capacity some Chinese labs train on arrived through a rule’s arithmetic.
The paper could not read the New York Times report; the figures are as quoted by Asia Times on 7 September.