China forbids the owner of TikTok from utilizing Nvidia chips

According to two company workers cited in The Information on Wednesday, Chinese regulators have prohibited ByteDance. The owner of TikTok, to deploy Nvidia chips in new data centers.

In an effort to ensure processing power for its over 1 billion users, ByteDance bought more Nvidia chips than any other Chinese company by 2025. Despite worries that Washington would reduce supply, according to the article.

Beijing’s efforts to lessen its dependency on American technology are highlighted by the reported ban. This push has gotten more intense as Washington tightens limits on the shipment of cutting-edge semiconductors to China.

According to Bloomberg, which cited sources familiar with Chinese technology regulators. Chinese authorities urged local companies to stop placing fresh orders for Nvidia AI chips in August and have since put pressure on enterprises to switch to locally produced processors.

An Nvidia representative told Reuters, «The regulatory landscape does not allow us to offer a competitive GPU for data centers in China, leaving that huge market to our rapidly growing foreign competitors.»

Washington has prohibited the export of Nvidia’s most sophisticated chips to China, permitting only reduced models such as the H2O. The RTX 6000D, a chip designed exclusively for China, was introduced by Nvidia. But there hasn’t been much demand, and some big IT businesses have chosen not to place orders.

Following discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month, US President Donald Trump declared that Washington would «let them do business with Nvidia, but not in terms of the most advanced chips.»