Recent reports indicate that NVIDIA has verbally communicated new rules to data center and cloud computing customers worldwide, requiring that at least 51% of services under any future contracts be sold to non-Chinese companies, effectively forcing cloud providers to reduce their reliance on Chinese clients.
These new rules were not issued through formal written documents but were instead conveyed and enforced verbally by NVIDIA's sales personnel and regional teams to cloud customers. The scope covers NVIDIA's global customers, not limited to Asian data centers, but applies only to future contracts, with existing leasing agreements remaining unaffected.
NVIDIA has stated that data centers and cloud services built on American chips serve as a critical foundation for U.S. model and application developers to compete globally, and long-standing U.S. policy has encouraged cloud service providers to adopt American infrastructure and pursue business in global markets.
Over the past several years, the U.S. government has continuously restricted NVIDIA's high-end AI chip exports to China on national security grounds, while cracking down on smuggling intermediaries that help chips flow into China. As direct access to chips has become increasingly difficult, Chinese companies have turned to overseas cloud service providers, renting data center computing power to perform AI model training and other advanced computational tasks.
By incorporating the 51% non-Chinese customer ratio into its new compliance requirements, NVIDIA is further narrowing the space for Chinese companies to obtain advanced American chips through overseas cloud leasing, forcing overseas data centers to readjust their customer structures. An institution headquartered in Singapore pointed out that it is not easy for cloud service providers to comply with the new rules, and finding enough non-Chinese customers is no simple task. Strict enforcement would inevitably impact operations and revenue, and could even force some data centers to scale back their business.
Additionally, NVIDIA has already reduced the number of Asian customers approved to purchase AI chips by more than half this year, and has established a stricter customer whitelist, using compliance reviews to reduce the risk of chips flowing into the Chinese market.
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