Nvidia asks some cloud customers to limit China business

Nvidia has told some cloud customers to accept less business from Chinese companies, according to The Information, which cited three people familiar with the matter. The guidance is intended to encourage a broader customer base among cloud providers, including neocloud companies backed by Nvidia. It is not mandatory and concerns future contracts rather than agreements already in place.

Cloud customers have also been asked to identify the end users who access Nvidia chips. The Financial Times reported that Nvidia communicated the request verbally through sales representatives and regional teams.

The measure addresses a gap in U.S. export controls. Those rules restrict shipments of chips but generally do not cover remote use through cloud services. Chinese AI developers can therefore rent computing capacity at data centers outside China without importing the hardware. U.S. authorities had been examining this type of access after allegations involving Moonshot AI, the company behind the Kimi chatbot.