"Nvidia Implements 'Whitelist' for Buyers to Block Indirect Exports to China"

"More than Half of Approved Buyers Cut"

Nvidia has reportedly tightened its screening process for Asian artificial intelligence (AI) chip buyers in an effort to block indirect exports to China, reducing the number of approved buyers by more than half.

According to major foreign media outlets on July 13 (local time), Nvidia recently introduced a "whitelist" that only includes companies that have passed regulatory compliance reviews in a bid to prevent its AI chips from flowing into China. Nvidia has been intensifying customer due diligence for chip purchases in Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan for several months, resulting in more than half of its previous customers being excluded.

This measure appears intended to close a loophole that has allowed U.S.-made advanced AI chips to enter China via third countries despite U.S. export controls. Nvidia is said to send staff to customer data centers to check contracts and interview end-users as part of efforts to verify whether the companies are genuinely conducting business operations.

Previously, the U.S. federal prosecutors indicted the co-founder and several employees of the server company Supermicro on charges of illegally exporting Nvidia chips worth $2.5 billion to China. Prosecutors determined that the defendants transported Nvidia chips from Taiwan to China, using companies in Southeast Asia as intermediaries and brokers for the transactions.

Latest-generation advanced AI chips from U.S. companies, including Nvidia, are currently banned from being exported to China. In December of last year, U.S. President Donald Trump allowed limited exports of some Nvidia advanced chips to China; however, this only applied to H200 chips, which are at least two generations older than the latest models.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.