The U.S. Department of Commerce plans to restrict the rental of NVIDIA Blackwell chips by seven countries

According to The Information, the U.S. Department of Commerce plans to introduce new regulations to prevent Chinese artificial intelligence companies from renting NVIDIA Blackwell and next-generation chips through data centers in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Norway, and South Africa. Importing related chips from these countries will require an export license. Buyers must disclose the chip recipients and the content that the chips will run, and they will be subject to ongoing monitoring. These requirements also apply to remote access and smuggling.

The Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Department of Commerce intends to extend existing semiconductor export controls to the aforementioned seven countries, with the new regulations possibly being announced as early as this month. U.S. companies operating data centers in these countries may be exempt from licensing requirements if they restrict remote access from weapon embargo countries such as China and Russia, but they still need to report local customers and computing power scale.