Nvidia Mandates 51% Non-Chinese Allocation for Cloud Customers
Nvidia has instructed cloud and data center customers to allocate at least 51% of new contracts to non-Chinese firms and report end-user identities. This move aims to close loopholes in US export controls regarding remote access to advanced chips, further intensifying global scarcity and price volatility for high-end compute resources.
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Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) · 2026-11-03 13
Nvidia has told cloud and data center customers that at least 51% of their services should go to non-Chinese companies, applying to new contracts only. per FT
That move aims at overseas cloud rental, the route Chinese AI developers use to train on advanced chips without importing them, since US export controls generally don’t cover remote access.
Cloud firms are also asked to report the identities of the chips’ end users, which would let Nvidia see who actually rents its hardware.
Earlier in the year, Nvidia drew up a “white list” and lowered the count of Asian customers cleared to buy its AI chips to less than half. The scarcity appears in pricing: a B300 rack sells internationally for about $600,000 yet went for US$2.54M in China last month, as some report states.
