Chinese regulators have barred TikTok parent ByteDance from using Nvidia AI accelerator chips in new data centres, The Information reported, citing two company staff, in the latest sign of China’s efforts to reduce its dependence on US computing technologies.
The report said ByteDance bought more Nvidia chips than any other Chinese firm in 2025 amid concerns around US export controls that could limit supplies.
Nvidia said in a statement that regulations do not allow it to offer a competitive data centre GPU in China, leaving the market to its foreign competitors.
Trade friction
In August, Bloomberg reported that Chinese regulators had asked domestic companies to halt new orders for Nvidia AI chips and were pushing companies to use locally produced products from companies such as Huawei.
At the time, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which regulates computer security, said it had summoned and interviewed Nvidia officials regarding the risks of potential tracking and remote-control functions in H20 chips, an older generation of AI processors produced for the Chinese market.
The People’s Daily newspaper, the official journal of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, published an editorial at the time saying China should not use “sick chips”.
Nvidia said at the time that its chips do not contain backdoors.
Tech independence
The US temporarily banned the H20 chip from sale to China, but currently allows its export.
Nvidia has also introduced a less powerful chip, the RTX6000D, for the Chinese market that is mainly aimed at inference tasks, but demand has reportedly been tepid.
