China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), has banned the country’s biggest technology companies from buying the Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips, as Beijing increases efforts to boost its domestic industry, Financial Times reported in a Sept. 17 article, “China Bans Tech Companies From Buying Nvidia’s AI Chips.”
Earlier this week, the CAC told large Chinese companies, such as ByteDance and Alibaba, to end their testing and orders of the RTX Pro 6000D, a chip that Nvidia tailor-made for China. Several Chinese companies that had ordered tens of thousands of the Nvidia chips told their suppliers to stop the work, FT reported.
Two processes are at work. First, Beijing is putting pressure on Chinese tech companies to boost the country’s homegrown semiconductor industry and break reliance on Nvidia. “The message is now loud and clear,” said an executive at one of the Chinese tech companies, reports FT. “Earlier, people had hopes of renewed Nvidia supply if the geopolitical situation improves. Now it’s all hands on deck to build the domestic system.”
Many Chinese semiconductor makers believe that their chips are as good as or superior to Nvidia’s and other American companies.
