Chinese AI firms rush to secure Nvidia chip capacity as spy scandal stirs fear of US curbs

Detailed summary

The current move to secure rented capacity points to growing concern among Chinese technology companies that the gap in US export controls may now be closed ...

Chinese AI companies are trying to rent Nvidia-powered computing capacity outside China, worried that the scandal involving the US chipmaker's CEO Jensen Huang could spur Washington to tighten restrictions on their remote use of advanced processors, three people familiar with the matter said.

Seeking to protect US dominance of the critical sector, Washington restricts exports to China of Nvidia's most advanced AI chips. But Chinese companies can access such processors remotely by renting computing power at data centres overseas.

The current move to secure rented capacity points to growing concern among Chinese technology companies that the gap in US export controls may now be closed.

A major Chinese cloud provider has discussed internally whether to lock in overseas Nvidia chip capacity, while some companies have contacted data-centre operators about reserving it, the people said. The people declined to be identified, or to identify the cloud provider, due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Smaller AI labs are considering similar steps, including approaching major providers of rented computing power in Southeast Asia, two of the people said.

The companies fear the controversy surrounding Huang could add political momentum to the Remote Access Security Act, or RASA, a US bill that would give the Commerce Department authority to regulate remote, cloud-based access to restricted technology, the people said. The House of Representatives passed the bill in January by a 369-22 vote, and it awaits Senate action.

Advanced Nvidia processors are used to train and run the large AI models behind chatbots and other generative AI products. Restricting overseas cloud access would make it harder for Chinese developers to obtain high-end computing power without importing the chips directly.

Nvidia's Huang said on Sunday that he had been unfaithful to his wife. The New York Times reported that the woman involved was Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based cloud-computing company…

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