Nvidia orders cloud partners to sell at least 51% of services to non-Chinese clients

A verbal rule for new contracts

The Financial Times reported on 3 November 2026 that Nvidia has told its data centre partners to limit Chinese business, requiring cloud providers to route at least 51% of their services to non-Chinese companies. The paper cited five people with knowledge of the matter, who said the requirement applies only to new contracts and leaves existing leasing agreements untouched. According to those sources, Nvidia passed the instruction on verbally through its sales force and regional teams rather than in writing, and it had imposed no such limit before. The rule covers clients worldwide, not only data centres in Asia. Nvidia did not confirm or deny the report when contacted by AFP. In a statement, the company argued for American-built infrastructure overseas:

“Datacenters and clouds built on American chips are the foundation that American model and application makers need to compete worldwide.”

Why the curbs bite Chinese AI firms

Many Chinese groups have rented computing capacity from cloud providers outside China for advanced AI work, including model training, and that overseas route is the one Washington has tried for years to close. The US has limited sales of Nvidia's most advanced chips to China since 2022, yet the hardware keeps entering the country through smuggling. Earlier in 2026, several senior staff at server maker Super Micro were charged over allegedly moving roughly $2.5bn of Nvidia AI servers into China. Chinese AI shares took a hit on the day of the report, with Z.AI and Minimax falling 8% in Hong Kong. Chinese technology companies are also the biggest customers of Southeast Asian data centres, so a drop in their demand would hit those operators directly.

Black market prices and shortages

A B300 rack holding eight Blackwell GPU chips sold for Rmb18.5mn ($2.8mn) in China in October 2026, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal cited by the FT. The same rack sells for about $600,000 internationally, a gap the FT attributes to scarcity in China. The FT also reported that Nvidia's crackdowns have created a growing shortage of advanced computing power for Chinese tech companies. Earlier in 2026, the paper had reported that Nvidia drew up a list of companies that passed stricter checks on chip diversion. One Singapore-based cloud group said it is "difficult to find enough non-Chinese clients outside the US", adding that if the rule is strictly enforced "it will definitely hurt business".

International price (about)600,000

China black market sale, October 20262,800,000

International price (about)

600000 USD

China black market sale, October 2026

2800000 USD

Data from the article text

Espionage claims and Beijing's reply

The new rule comes after a New York Times report from late October 2026 that Jensen Huang had been the target of a Chinese espionage operation. The NYT named a Singapore-based data centre executive described as close to Huang and suspected of passing sensitive information to Beijing. According to the same report, about a year earlier Donald Trump was briefed on the US intelligence findings but chose not to intervene, fearing disruption to Nvidia's chip sales and further strain in US-China trade relations. La Libre notes that Huawei has strengthened its position in China's chip market with support from Chinese authorities. When questioned on the Financial Times story, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said she had no knowledge of it, and she voiced the hope that all parties would offer companies from every country a "fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment".