New China export curbs being considered by the Biden Administration will lead to “a permanent loss of opportunities for the US industry”, Nvidia’s financial chief has warned.
US officials are planning to implement fresh bans on sales of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China by clamping down on the amount of computing power the chips can have, two people familiar with the matter said.
That follows export control rules it implemented last October, aimed at stalling China’s chip industry and prevent technological progress in the country’s military. US allies Japan and Netherlands have also joined those efforts.
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Nvidia, the most valuable US chipmaker, found itself in the crosshairs of the US-China chip war in September, when US officials asked the company to stop exporting its two top computing chips for AI work to China.
The chipmaker then started offering two new chips to China — the A800 and the H800 — both tweaked to reduce chip-to-chip data transfer rates so as to meet US limits.
The new curbs being considered by Washington would ban sales of even those chips, without a special US export licence, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
“Over the long-term, restrictions prohibiting the sale of our data-center graphic processing units to China, if implemented, would result in a permanent loss of opportunities for the US industry to compete and lead in one of the world’s largest markets and impact on our future business and financial results,” Nvidia’s chief financial officer Colette Kress said.
The updated rules may come into effect by late July, the two sources said, as part of US efforts to strengthen its own chip industry, including through billions of dollars worth of subsidies.
Nvidia shares closed down 1.8% on Wednesday. So far this year, they have nearly tripled thanks to booming demand for AI chips.
Other US chipmakers have also been caught up in the US-China technology spat.
In a tit-for-tat move, China’s cyberspace regulator failed products from US memory chipmaker Micron Technology in a security review last month and barred purchases by operators of key infrastructure.
Micron has said it expects the ban to impact a low-double-digit percentage of its total revenue.
- Reuters, with additional editing by Vishakha Saxena
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