IA: Beijing strikes, nvidia in great difficulty

The technological battle between Beijing and Washington crosses a new level. According to the Financial Times, China has ordered its digital giants, including Alibaba and Bytedance, to immediately suspend their purchases and tests from the latest artificial intelligence chips, the RTX Pro 6000 D. This decision illustrates the rise in tensions around semiconductors, now at the heart of geopolitical and economic rivalry between the two superpowers.

A targeted ban on the IA fleas of Nvidia

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has issued a formal directive against several Chinese technological giants, including Bytedance and Alibaba.

The order is clear: immediately suspend all the current tests and orders linked to the NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000D fleas, which is specially developed to bypass American restrictions on advanced semiconductors.

Here are the important facts:

• The CAC explicitly asked several groups to stop any use of RTX Pro 6000D, the artificial intelligence chip launched by Nvidia for the Chinese market;

• Companies had already started tests and validation processes with providers of NVIDIA partner servers, with orders for several tens of thousands of units;

• Following the directive, these companies immediately interrupted all the operations in progress, without public comment to date on the part of the groups concerned;

• This prohibition goes further than the previous ones, which only targeted the H20 model, a previous version also designed for the Chinese market.

Asked at a press conference in London, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, recognized the impact of this decision, while adopting a measured tone. “We can only serve a market if a country wants us to do it,” he declared.

He added: “I am disappointed with what I see, but China and the United States have larger agendas. I am patient on this subject ”. This declaration comes when Beijing has also just accused Nvidia of offenses to its anti-monopoly legislation, and that tense diplomatic exchanges continue between the two countries.

In this context, the Chinese decision can be interpreted as a strategic response assumed to American climbing on the front of technological restrictions.

An assumed strategic fracture: Beijing accelerates its technological decoupling

What distinguishes this ban from the previous ones is its magnitude. Until now, Chinese restrictions focused mainly on the H20 chip, another version designed by Nvidia to remain in accordance with American sanctions.

This time, Beijing directly targets the latest generation, the RTX Pro 6000D, which had just been launched. This rise in intensity reflects a change in strategic approach on the part of the Chinese authorities, who are no longer content to slow down certain products, but now seem determined to actively break their dependence on critical technologies from the United States.

Faced with successive American restrictions on advanced semiconductors, China, an influential member of the BRICS block, multiplies initiatives to support its own players in hardware and components. The demand for the RTX6000D was already limited before the ban, some Chinese companies having deliberately chosen not to place an order. This could point out increasing confidence towards local alternatives, even if they remain technically lower than this stage.

In this climate, Nvidia finds herself in a delicate position. Deprived of a strategic outlet, the company sees its prospects in China to darken, with a potential impact on its turnover, especially in the segments linked to the AI ​​and, by ricochet, to sectors dependent on calculation power such as the web3.