China’s internet regulator, The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has banned the country’s technology companies from buying Nvidia’s Artificial Intelligence chips following the country’s plans to steps up efforts to boost its domestic industry and compete with the US.
Companies like ByteDance and Alibaba were told to end their testing and orders of the RTX Pro 6000D, Nvidia’s tailor-made product for the country, following an earlier ban on the H20, Nvidia’s other China-only chip widely used for AI.
Boost For Chinese Semiconductor Industry
Chinese regulators have stated that its domestic chips had attained performance comparable to those of Nvidia’s models used in China, hence the need for 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.
Chinese domestic chipmakers, including Huawei and Cambricon, as well as Alibaba and search engine giant Baidu, which also make their own semiconductors, are said to have convinced China’s regulatory agency that their AI processors have reached a level comparable to or exceeding that of the Nvidia products allowed under export controls.
“The top-level consensus now is there’s going to be enough domestic supply to meet demand without having to buy Nvidia chips,” said an industry insider.
“The message is now loud and clear, 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.” a leader in one of China’s top tech companies revealed.