China bans tech firms from Nvidia chip purchases: Report

As China expands its domestic manufacturing industry, China has banned its top tech companies from purchasing chips from Nvidia.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s internet regulator, instructed tech giants, including ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, and Alibaba, to stop testing an AI chip that the Santa Clara, California-based chip manufacturer had made specifically for the Chinese market.

Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, called the report “disappointed.”

At a press conference in London, he declared, “We will continue to support the Chinese government and Chinese companies as they please.”

Numerous businesses had made the commitment to purchase tens of thousands of RTX Pro 6000D chips and had begun testing and verification work with Nvidia’s server suppliers.

Despite the tests, there was only a small supply of the chip in China, according to a report from the Reuters news agency earlier this week from major tech companies there.

Nvidia’s stock fell on Wall Street as a result of the ban, which is the second-largest cloud computing market in the world. As of 11: 30am in New York, (15: 30 GMT), it was down 2.6 percent.

escalating tensions

The company was charged with breaking its anti-monopoly law, which focused on the H20 chip, a previous model specifically designed for the Chinese market, after the Chinese government made the accusations.

This week’s latest round of trade talks between the United States and China wrapped up with the White House announcing that private parties would take over TikTok’s US operations, leaving parent company ByteDance with a minority stake.

Beijing has been pressured by domestic companies to turn away from US suppliers in the wake of successive US administrations, which has hampered industry leaders like Nvidia.

As Nvidia is scheduled to supply the United Kingdom arm of Stargate, a Trump-backed AI infrastructure project led by OpenAI, with tens of thousands of processor chips as it constructs data centers, Huang is in London at the same time as US President Donald Trump’s state visit there.

At a state banquet on Wednesday evening, Huang said he anticipates talking about the situation with the president.

When asked if he had spoken to Trump about the developments, Huang replied, “I’ll see him tonight, and he’ll probably ask me.”