According to an article in the Financial Times, Times, Chinese companies are stripping the gaming graphics cards from thousands of Nvidia products in order to develop artificial intelligence tools. These are then being installed on new circuit boards. Purchasers of these components are primarily state owned AI laboratories, according to the article. The full article can be found here: https://www.ft.com/content/eeea7c4d-71f0-454f-bd16-b2445cb3bbb0
Nvidia’s most powerful gaming graphics board, the GeForce RTX 4090, was apparently one of the most popular models to be repurposed. However it has now been blocked from being sold to China.
NVIDIA Corporation is a large successful company headquartered in California that provides graphics, and compute and networking solutions in the United States, Taiwan, China, and internationally. The company’s Graphics segment offers GeForce GPUs for gaming and PCs, the GeForce NOW game streaming service and related infrastructure, and solutions for gaming platforms; Quadro/NVIDIA RTX GPUs for enterprise workstation graphics; vGPU software for cloud-based visual and virtual computing; automotive platforms for infotainment systems; and Omniverse software for building 3D designs and virtual worlds and many other products. NVIDIA holds approximately 80% of the global market share in GPU semiconductor chips as of 2023. Market cap: $1.21 trillion.
U.S. members of Congress have expressed their concern over the use of American products by China to advance their AI capacities. Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat and the committee’s ranking member, jointly sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Trade Representative Katherine Tai calling for urgent action to stem U.S. reliance on China’s less advanced chips by using all means, including potential tariffs.
“We are concerned that [China] is on track to flood the United States and global markets with foundational semiconductors,” the lawmakers wrote. Compared to high-performance chips, “far less attention” has been given to the risk that a surge of Chinese-made foundational chips poses to U.S. economic security, the lawmakers said
Nvidia announced this week that it is planning to roll out mass production of its new AI chip designed for China in 2024.
Jeffrey Newman Esq. is an attorney whose law firm represents whistleblowers under the SEC, CFTC and FINCEN whistleblower programs. Persons providing original information to these agencies through counsel may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of a successful recovery made by the SEC, CFTC OR FINCEN and the names and identification of the whistleblowers are kept confidential. His firm also represents whistleblowers in healthcare fraud cases relating to Medicare of Medicaid. Attorney Newman can be reached at Jeff@Jeffnewmanlaw.com or at 617-823-3217
