Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices both saw their stocks drop more than 2% on Wednesday, a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Commerce Department was considering adding additional restrictions on chip sales to companies in China, including a complete stop to Nvidia's ability to sell chips there. The limits would add to a growing number of export controls implemented by the White House to limit China's ability to develop military-grade technology.
The additional restrictions could be implemented as early as next month, according to people familiar with the matter. Officials in the Commerce Department previously restricted the ability of Nvidia to provide some of its more advanced chips to China in September, a decision that cost the company $400 million in sales. The manufacturer attempted to respond by creating a cheaper chip known as the A800. The current proposed rules would restrict the sales of the A800 without licensing.
Nvidia has slammed the export controls."If we are deprived of the Chinese market, we don't have a contingency for that," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in May."There is no other China; there is only one China." Huang argued that restricting the U.S. ability to sell chips overseas would not only lose U.S. businesses money but would force China to develop their own chips.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced on Thursday that the United States would construct at least two new semiconductor factory hubs with the money provided by President Joe Biden's CHIPS Act, bipartisan legislation that provided more than $52 billion in funds to subsidize domestic manufacturing of chips.