China blocks sale of Nvidia AI chips

China’s Internet regulator has banned the country’s biggest technology companies from buying Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips, as Beijing steps up efforts to boost its domestic industry and compete with the US.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) told companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, this week to end their testing and orders of the RTX Pro 6000D, Nvidia’s tailor-made product for the country, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Several companies had indicated they would order tens of thousands of the RTX Pro 6000D, and had started testing and verification work with Nvidia’s server suppliers, the people said.

After receiving the CAC order, the companies told their suppliers to stop the work, the people added.

The ban goes beyond earlier guidance from regulators that focused on the H20, Nvidia’s other China-only chip widely used for AI. It comes after Chinese regulators concluded that domestic chips had attained performance comparable to those of Nvidia’s models used in China.

Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, told reporters in London on Wednesday that he expected to discuss the chipmaker’s ability to do business in China with Donald Trump that evening during the US president’s state visit to the UK.

“We can only be in service of a market if the country wants us to be,” he said. “I’m disappointed with what I see. But they have larger agendas to work out, between China and the US, and I’m understanding of that. We are patient about it.”

Beijing is putting pressure on Chinese tech companies to boost the country’s homegrown semiconductor industry and break their reliance on Nvidia so it can compete in an AI race against the US.