Nvidia Quietly Tells Data Center Partners to Keep Chinese Customers Below 50% of Their Cloud Business, Financial Times Reports
The Daily Caller and Breitbart both relay the FT report. The rule is verbal, applies to new contracts worldwide, and Nvidia would not confirm or deny it. A Singapore cloud provider says it will 'definitely hurt business.'
Nvidia is capping how much of a data center partner's business can go to Chinese customers, the Daily Caller reports, citing the Financial Times.
The rule. The Financial Times reported Monday that Nvidia is telling companies that rent out its chips to keep Chinese customers to no more than 49% of sales. Breitbart, also citing the FT, frames it as selling at least 51% of cloud computing services to non-Chinese companies. Both say the instruction was passed on verbally and never put in writing.
Scope. It applies to new contracts worldwide, not just in Asia, and existing leasing agreements are untouched. Breitbart says the sales force and regional teams have been passing it along since the summer, and that sources describe it as a pre-emptive move to head off criticism from U.S. lawmakers. The Daily Caller says it could limit Chinese firms' ability to use American data centers' chip power to train their own AI models.
The separate whitelist. Both outlets say Nvidia also created a list of verified customers that cut its Asian clients by more than 50%, part of an effort to stop chips from being smuggled into China.
Nvidia's response. A spokesperson told the Daily Caller that America cannot win the AI race unless American infrastructure wins worldwide, and that long-standing U.S. policy encourages data centers everywhere to run on U.S. chips. The spokesperson did not confirm or deny the verbal requirement. The Chinese Embassy did not respond, and the Commerce Department gave no on-record comment.
The pushback. A Singapore-based cloud provider told the FT it is "difficult to find enough non-Chinese clients outside the US," and that strict enforcement "will definitely hurt business."
The demand side. The Daily Caller cites Reuters from Oct. 20 reporting that ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent asked Nvidia for more than 3 million RTX Pro 5500 chips, worth over $35 billion, a request Nvidia may be unable to meet because it exceeds production.
What we could not check. We have not read the Financial Times report. The rule is unwritten, and neither outlet has seen it on paper. Read Breitbart's version: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/11/03/nvidia-orders-data-center-partners-to-limit-exposure-to-chinese-customers/