China's ByteDance gained access to over 2,000 Nvidia B200 chips through Norway data center

UK-based “neocloud” Nscale built its business on a major deal with a ByteDance subsidiary named Spring, which accounted for $24 million of its $33 million annual revenue in 2025. This contract allowed Spring to access 2,304 Nvidia B200 chips at Nscale’s Glomfjord, Norway, data center. Even though the Financial Times reports that this was legal and exploited loopholes in the U.S.’s ongoing export controls against China, it still exposes the company to regulatory and reputational risk, especially as Washington continues to restrict Chinese access to its most advanced AI accelerators.

This information only came to light after Nscale released its S-1 documents as it filed for an initial public offering in the U.S. There was also no direct mention of the TikTok owner or its subsidiary anywhere in its S-1 filing; instead, it was noted in a supporting document, a $105 million loan agreement with Macquarie, that Spring (SG) Pte Ltd, a Singaporean ByteDance subsidiary, was a significant customer. This credit, alongside a $35 million in equity, helped fund the purchase of advanced Nvidia AI GPUs, which also caught the attention of the chipmaker.

A month after Nscale drew the first tranche of the loan, it closed a deal with Microsoft and Nvidia, with Jensen Huang committing to invest more than $660 million into the company. This funding is part of an agreement between Nscale and Nvidia, under which the latter promised to buy large volumes of AI chips in the future. Nvidia has since increased its commitments to over $2 billion, plus an additional $860 million guarantee on Nscale’s lease at a Texas facility. Nscale has since been able to secure larger deals with other AI hyperscalers, such as a $44 billion deal with Microsoft and another $45 billion contract with Anthropic. The company said that this would make its Spring contract fall to below 20% of its overall revenue, and it is expected to shrink further as Nscale secures other Western clients.

Because of Spring’s link to ByteDance, Macquarie compelled Nscale to monitor how the Chinese subsidiary used the AI chips and report “compute anomalies or suspicious configurations” that might be in violation of the U.S.’s export controls. Nscale also had a third party conduct due diligence on both the TikTok parent and the Singapore-based subsidiary to ensure that the deal complied with the law.

Chinese companies have been taking advantage of these loopholes in the U.S.’s export controls to gain access to advanced AI chips. While they cannot import the most advanced Nvidia AI GPUs, like Blackwell and Vera Rubin, into China, they could still rent these AI chips from companies based abroad or by using subsidiaries founded outside of China to purchase them directly. However, the U.S. has recently closed the latter loophole, with the Trump administration working to close the former, too. It’s unclear if these moves would affect the Spring-Nscale deal, but the recent delays on gigawatt-scale data center projects in the U.S. mean that Nscale could potentially get more clients as AI hyperscalers race to secure compute from smaller facilities.

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