Nvidia has told its data center customers to limit how much business they do with Chinese companies, the Financial Times reported, as cited by Tom's Hardware. According to the report, operators that sell computing services to Chinese companies will have to track their share and keep it at no more than 49% of total business, so that at least 51% of customers are non-Chinese. It is the first time Nvidia has set such a rule.
According to the report, the policy was communicated to customers through Nvidia's sales force and regional teams and was not published in an official document. It applies to data centers worldwide, not only in Asia, but only to new and future contracts, not to existing leasing agreements for Nvidia hardware.
In a statement, Nvidia said that "American chips are the foundation that American model and application makers need to compete worldwide," and that current US policy encourages cloud providers to build on American infrastructure. The company did not explicitly confirm the figures. The impact on operators that rely on Chinese customers is not yet known.