U.S. officials ordered Nvidia to stop exporting two top chips for artificial intelligence to China, the company said on Wednesday.
According to the chip designer, in a Securities Exchange Commission filing on Aug. 26 the U.S. government told the company about a new license requirement for future exports to China and Hong Kong, to reduce the risk that the products may be used by the Chinese military.
“The license requirement also includes any future Nvidia integrated circuit achieving both peak performance and chip-to-chip I/O performance equal to or greater than thresholds that are roughly equivalent to the A100, as well as any system that includes those circuits,” the filing said.
The announcement is a new chapter in the escalation of the U.S. crackdown on China’s technological capabilities.
Nvidia shares fell 6.5% in extended trading on Wednesday after the news.
The company expects that it could lose $400 million in potential sales in China in the current quarter after previously forecasting revenue of $5.9 billion.
Rival AMD confirmed that it had also received new licensing requirements from the U.S. Department of Commerce, however those would hardly cause a material impact to its business.
After the news broke the Chinese foreign ministry responded by accusing the U.S of attempting to impose a “tech blockade”.
