U.S. media: China regulators bans ByteDance from using NVIDIA chips

U.S. media reported that China regulators have barred tech giant ByteDance from using NVIDIA chips in its new data centers.

According to The Information, citing two ByteDance employees, the company purchased more NVIDIA chips this year than any other Chinese firm—stockpiling computing power for its over one billion users ahead of potential further U.S. export restrictions.

This ban underscores Beijing’s accelerating efforts to reduce reliance on American technology amid Washington’s ongoing tightening of controls on advanced semiconductor exports to China.

An NVIDIA spokesperson said: “The current regulatory environment prevents us from offering competitive data center GPUs in China, leaving this vast market to be captured by our fast-growing foreign competitors.”

As previously reported by Bloomberg and Reuters, in August Chinese regulators instructed domestic companies to halt new orders of NVIDIA AI chips and encouraged the adoption of domestically produced processors. The Chinese government has also issued guidelines requiring all new data center projects funded with state money to use only homegrown AI chips.