(Reuters) -Nvidia Corp said on Thursday that the U.S. government has allowed exports and in-country transfers needed to complete the development of its flagship artificial intelligence chip.
The disclosure comes a day after Washington told the company to stop exporting its two top computing chips for AI work to China, a move Nvidia said could interfere with the development of the H100 chip it announced this year.
The ban signaled a major escalation of the U.S. crackdown on China’s technological capabilities as tensions bubble over the fate of Taiwan, where chips for Nvidia and almost every other major chip firm are manufactured.
The ban, which affects Nvidia’s A100 and H100 chips designed to speed up machine learning tasks, sent the company’s shares down 4% before the bell.
In its statement on Thursday, Nvidia said U.S. officials have authorized it to perform exports needed to provide support for U.S. customers of A100 through March 1, 2023.
The chip designer has also been allowed to fulfill orders of the chips via its Hong Kong facility through Sept. 1, 2023. (https://bit.ly/3Q5YfhR)
Rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc, whose shares were down 3%, was also asked on Wednesday to stop AI chip exports to China. The company did not respond to a request for comment on whether it received a similar authorization.
The ban is likely to hit almost any major tech company running public clouds or advanced artificial intelligence training modules in China, experts said.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram and Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
