China moved to bar domestic firms from buying Nvidia’s latest China-market chips, signaling growing confidence that homegrown silicon can shoulder the country’s AI ambitions. Regulators told platforms including ByteDance and Alibaba to halt purchases of Nvidia’s RTX 6000D, days after China’s market watchdog accused Nvidia of antitrust violations. The move coincided with Huawei unveiling an aggressive chip roadmap, promising three new processors by 2028 and “supernode” rack systems that can be clustered to offset single-chip performance gaps. State media showcased Alibaba’s Pingtouge chip, claiming advantages over Nvidia’s H20 and H800 in memory, bandwidth and efficiency; Alibaba shares rose 6% on the report. Executives and academics concede Chinese chips still trail Nvidia in versatility and peak compute, but argue cluster computing, stockpiled inventory, and security concerns over potential “backdoors” in U.S. hardware make domestic alternatives viable. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said he was disappointed by the ban, underscoring a U.S.-China tech rivalry where export controls and regulatory scrutiny increasingly shape AI supply chains.
Why Beijing thinks it can block Nvidia chips — and still power its AI ambitions
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