Is China Phasing Out Nvidia? ByteDance, Alibaba Pull Back as Baidu Boosts In-House AI Chips

TradingKey - As China’s domestic AI computing chips rise in capability, the U.S.-China tech rivalry is entering a new phase where software and hardware strengths are becoming increasingly balanced. After launching an antitrust investigation into Nvidia, China has further tightened restrictions on major tech firms using Nvidia products, moving beyond just the H20 chip.

According to the Financial Times, citing three people familiar with the matter, China’s Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued a notice this week to companies including ByteDance and Alibaba, instructing them to halt testing and ordering of Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000D product.

The RTX Pro 6000D was recently developed by Nvidia specifically for the Chinese market. Based on the Blackwell architecture, this GPU is priced lower than the earlier China-specific H20 chip (based on the Hopper architecture). It was designed primarily to fill the gap left by the April ban on H20 sales in China.

Sources said several Chinese firms had previously committed to purchasing tens of thousands of RTX Pro 6000D units and had already begun testing and validation work with Nvidia’s server partners. 

However, after receiving the CAC notice, these major buyers instructed suppliers to halt all related activities.

This move marks a significant escalation in China’s restrictions on Nvidia chips. Previously, reports indicated that the Chinese government advised enterprises to avoid using Nvidia chips due to concerns over potential “backdoors” — but those warnings were limited to the H20 model.

Nvidia dominates the global AI chip market, but China’s growing confidence in abandoning its products stems from rapid advancements in its domestic semiconductor industry. 

Recently, news that Alibaba and Baidu have started using in-house AI chips for training models has fueled excitement around “Made-in-China substitution.”

On the evening of September 16, China’s state broadcaster CCTV News aired a segment detailing Alibaba’s Pingtouge PPU chip, highlighting key specifications that now rival Nvidia’s H20 and surpass the A800.

From U.S. export controls on Nvidia chips to China’s reciprocal “blockade,” the balance of AI hardware competition is gradually shifting toward China.

Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who is currently accompanying President Trump on a state visit to the UK, said:

“We can only be in service of a market if the country wants us to be. ’m disappointed with what I see. But they have larger agendas to work out, between China and the US, and I’m understanding of that. We are patient about it.”

Despite a partial rebound in recent weeks along with broader markets, Nvidia shares are still down 4% from their mid-August peak, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite have repeatedly hit new all-time highs.