It’s possible that NVIDIA will have to cancel orders worth US$5 billion from China.
The U.S. Commerce Department appears to have put a major wrench in NVIDIA’s operations by notifying the company that orders for AI chips worth US$5 billion that are going to China are subject to the most recent export restrictions from the US. According to reports, the orders were allegedly intended for Baidu, Alibaba, and ByteDance, among other significant Chinese tech firms. Due to this, NVIDIA’s stock fell precipitously when the US market opened earlier today, falling short of $1 trillion in market capitalization. In the afternoon, the share price saw some recovery, which allowed NVIDIA to rejoin the trillion dollar club.
A representative for NVIDIA told Reuters that “these new export controls will not have a meaningful impact in the near term,” suggesting that the company is not overly concerned despite what looks to be a significant loss in sales. It appears that NVIDIA will need to find new customers for the AI chips as the US government is set to impose new export restrictions starting in November. Clearly, the company didn’t have much time to prepare for these restrictions. Though this might not be too much of a challenge for the company given the current demand for NVIDIA’s chips.
