[Alpha Biz= Kim Jisun] Beijing/Seoul, September 17, 2025 — Chinese regulators have ordered domestic companies to halt purchases of NVIDIA’s latest China-specific artificial intelligence (AI) chip, the RTX 6000D, escalating restrictions on U.S. semiconductor technology.
According to a report by the Financial Times citing three sources, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) notified major firms including ByteDance and Alibaba this week to suspend both testing and procurement of the lower-spec RTX 6000D. Several companies had reportedly been testing the chip with server suppliers and preparing orders in the tens of thousands before the directive forced them to stop.
The move goes beyond existing curbs on NVIDIA’s high-performance H20 AI chip, which Chinese authorities had already restricted for use in government and national security-related projects.
Industry executives told local media that Chinese firms see the RTX 6000D as less attractive compared to NVIDIA’s RTX 5090, citing weaker performance. While the RTX 6000D is built on NVIDIA’s “Blackwell” architecture and offers lower costs by using standard GDDR memory instead of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the performance trade-offs have led many companies to favor the more powerful H20 chip for AI training workloads.
The H20, initially banned under U.S. export controls imposed by the Trump administration last year, was partially cleared for sale during U.S.-China trade talks in July. However, shipments have not yet begun. NVIDIA has reportedly agreed to remit 15% of China-related sales revenue to the U.S. government as a condition for export approval, though regulatory details remain unresolved.
One Chinese tech executive commented, “In the past, we expected NVIDIA chip supplies to resume as geopolitical tensions eased. Now, the focus has shifted entirely to building domestic systems.”
알파경제 Kim Jisun (stockmk2020@alphabiz.co.kr)
