BEIJING, July 12 (TMTPost)— Washington’s looming exports on artificial intelligence (AI) products triggered new demand for AI chip in China.

Credit：Visual China

The price of Nvidia AI chip A800 is changing day by day, and buyers who order in large quantities can secure it at more than RMB100,000 apiece, while those order less have to pay at least RMB110,000 per chip, a Nvidia dealership told The Paper, Chinese digital newspaper owned by  the Shanghai United Media Group. “Given the news about chip export ban, everyone is reluctant to sell (the chip), and the price has been raised by 20% to 30% in the past week or so,” the dealer added.

Jiang Lei, founder and CEO of IC Superman, an e-commerce platform for electronic components and chips, confirmed ongoing increase in price of A800 recently due to possible export ban, and added there were still some chips in stock to meet demand, according to The Paper.

Nvidia is the semiconductor designer that dominates the market for AI chips, which empower AI systems including the large language model behind ChatGPT. The behemoth said in March it has modified some of flagship products including A100 and H100 for exports to China, as the U.S. regulators last year banned it from selling its most advanced chips to China.

The robust demand for A800 came after news about the United States’ potential expansion of curbs on China’s tech industry to AI sector.

The Biden administration is considering new curbs on the exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, including stopping the chip shipments made by U.S. companies to customers in China and other countries concerned without first obtaining a license, the Wall Street Journal reported late June, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The U.S. Commerce Department could reportedly announce the move as soon as early July, affecting all the American chipmakers such as Nvidia, AMD and Micron Technology.

 Nvidia is a dominator of the market for chips that empower artificial intelligence (AI) systems including the model behind ChatGPT. It has modified some of flagship products including A100 and H100 for exports to China earlier this year, including an alternative A800 chip, as the U.S. regulators last year banned it from selling its most advanced chips to the country. The Commerce Department is mulling restrictions that would even ban sales of A800 without a license, according to the report. The U.S. government was also reported to weigh whether to restrict leasing of cloud services to Chinese AI companies.

Nvidia's Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress warned restrictions on AI chip exports to China would lead to “a permanent loss of opportunities for the U.S. industry right after the Wall Street Journal report. "Over the long term, restrictions prohibiting the sale of our datacenter graphic processing units to China, if implemented, would result in a permanent loss of opportunities for the U.S. industry to compete and lead in one of the world’s largest markets and impact on our future business and financial results," said Kress, though seeing no immediate material impact. 

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang earlier this year warned U.S.’s dangerous attempts to further curb China’s development. Huang said he sees the potential for “enormous damage” to U.S. companies if the chip war with China escalates during an interview with the Financial Times in May. “If we are deprived of the Chinese market, we don’t have a contingency for that,” he said. “There is no other China, there is only one China.” Huang warned in June not to underrate China’s ability to catch up in chips as China will cultivate its own chip firms in response with tensions with U.S. he also said he feels "perfectly safe" about relying so much on chip powerhouse Taiwan for manufacturing.

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