The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s top internet regulator, has reportedly banned its biggest tech companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, from buying Nvidia’s AI chips. According to the Financial Times, the CAC said that these institutions should stop testing the new RTX Pro 6000D and cancel their orders, even though several companies had already indicated their interest in purchasing tens of thousands of these GPUs, which were set to replace the H20 after it was banned (but before it was unbanned again). This goes against the initial reports that reception for the more affordable AI China-specific GPU was lukewarm — instead, it turns out that the central government was blocking the purchase of these graphics cards. This new ban comes just weeks after companies were directed to stop ordering Nvidia H20 chips, too.
Beijing reportedly believes that homegrown AI chip makers, like Huawei and Cambricon, now produce chips that have comparable performance to Nvidia’s China-only products. And although Team Green might still have an advantage with its software stack, other Chinese tech giants like Tencent are pushing to build their own infrastructure to replace that. Because of these developments, China’s chip makers are ramping production in anticipation of the glut of orders coming from companies that need AI chips but can’t purchase Nvidia products.
