US takes step to halt Nvidia AI chip shipments to Chinese firms outside China

The U.S. Department of Commerce on Sunday moved to close a year-old potential loophole it had created that may have led companies to export the world's most advanced chips - like Nvidia's most sophisticated Rubin and Blackwell processors, as well as AMD's MI350x - to Chinese entities located outside China.



The unexpected guidance suggests the United States' best AI chips may have been making their way to the subsidiaries of Chinese AI firms based in places like Malaysia for almost a year despite broader U.S. efforts to starve Chinese firms of semiconductors needed to develop critical AI capabilities.



The new guidance was posted on the Commerce Department's website on Sunday.



It is unclear how many of the chips have been exported in the year that the Trump administration left the door open. One chip industry source with deep supply-chain knowledge estimated it was in the hundreds of thousands.