Nvidia tells cloud clients most of their customers must be non-Chinese

Nvidia has instructed its cloud computing and data centre clients to scale back their exposure to Chinese companies, according to a Financial Times report published on November 3. The world's biggest chipmaker told cloud providers that a majority of their end customers must be non-Chinese, a directive that marks a significant tightening of compliance requirements around how its chips reach end users in China.

The move extends a broader pattern of Nvidia stepping up scrutiny over where its advanced AI chips ultimately land. The company has previously introduced whitelists of approved buyers and tightened compliance checks across Asian markets to prevent chips from reaching Chinese entities through third parties. Requiring cloud clients to demonstrate that most of their own customer base is non-Chinese represents a more structural demand, effectively limiting how much Chinese business those intermediaries can conduct on hardware running Nvidia silicon.