
NVIDIA has begun requiring sellers of computing power to control the proportion of customers from China. According to a report by the Financial Times on November 3, NVIDIA has asked its global cloud customers to sell at least 51% of their computing power to non-Chinese companies. This requirement has been verbally enforced since this summer, with no written documentation issued, and existing contracts remain unaffected. Reuters, in its reporting, noted that this has not been independently verified. This detail warrants attention from Chinese AI companies. When unable to purchase chips, renting servers overseas has long been an alternative option. Now, according to this report, suppliers are also beginning to regulate the customer structure of their downstream clients. If this ratio is enforced, a cloud company seeking to serve more Chinese customers will need to secure a sufficient number of non-Chinese customers to balance its sales. The amount of equipment one can procure and the number of Chinese orders one can accept will become two separate constraints. For Chinese teams, having servers located outside China does not mean expansion depends solely on budget. The availability of computing power may also be influenced by whether the cloud provider has enough other customers. This is an enterprise requirement disclosed today—not a new ban issued by the U.S. government, nor does it imply immediate cutoff of existing computing power. Existing contracts are exempt; the real focus should be on new orders, the next round of scaling, and conditions upon contract renewal.