The US Commerce Department is close to finishing a rule, possibly this month, that would require licenses for Nvidia Blackwell-class and newer chips in Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand, to keep Chinese AI firms from tapping them remotely, according to The Information. Buyers in those seven countries would have to tell the department who receives the chips and how they’ll be used, and would face monitoring meant to catch smuggling. US-run data centers in the same countries could skip the license if they block remote access from arms-embargoed countries like China and Russia, and would report any customers from those countries along with their compute. Nvidia has lobbied against such rules, since overseas data centers are big buyers of its chips.
