Chinese authorities have reportedly blocked TikTok-owner ByteDance from deploying Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA, XETRA:NVD) chips in its new data centers, according to a report on Wednesday from The Information, which cited two company employees.
ByteDance, which purchased more Nvidia chips than any other Chinese firm in 2025, had been rapidly acquiring computing power to support its billion-plus users amid concerns that Washington could further restrict chip supplies.
The move comes amid ongoing tensions over semiconductor exports and Beijing’s efforts to reduce reliance on US technology. Despite ByteDance’s significant stockpiling of high-end Nvidia GPUs, including H100 and H20 models, many of these chips reportedly remain unused due to regulatory restrictions.
“The regulatory landscape does not allow us to offer a competitive data center GPU in China, leaving that massive market to our rapidly growing foreign competitors,” a Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement to the media.
Wedbush analysts highlighted that ByteDance was likely the largest Chinese buyer of Nvidia, and possibly AMD, data center GPUs, suggesting it would not be surprising if China is preventing the company from using previously purchased US components.
They also noted that much of China’s AI work, particularly inference workloads, can run on older or less advanced chips, a factor that has helped smaller “neoclouds” operate cost-effectively using discounted GPUs.
However, Wedbush said the report may overstate the threat of China’s AI technology being adopted internationally at the expense of US tech.
The analysts pointed out that China’s production of advanced semiconductors and related components like memory remains constrained, limiting both domestic and export capacity.
Until there is broader deployment of mature node technology, leadership in AI hardware, particularly Nvidia’s dominance, is unlikely to be seriously challenged, Wedbush believes.