Shares of Chinese artificial intelligence developers fell amid a crisis at Nvidia’s management: investors fear that Washington will limit Chinese companies’ access to its accelerators in foreign data centers. At the same time, expectations of new restrictions previously supported shares of local chip manufacturers, which may benefit from China’s desire to reduce dependence on American equipment.
Image source: BoliviaInteligente / unsplash.com
The sale included shares of Z.AI, MiniMax, Tencent and Alibaba – investors are worried that companies may lose access to computing power based on Nvidia accelerators abroad. During trading on November 13 in Hong Kong, shares of Z.AI fell by 10.88%, MiniMax by 8.73%, Tencent by 2.71%, Alibaba by 2.35%, and Kuaishou Technology by 3.91%. At the time of publication of these data, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was down 0.9%, the CSI 300 in mainland China was down 0.1% and the Shanghai Composite was up 0.2%. In the previous three sessions, mainland China’s main indices showed gains.
Investors fear the turmoil at Nvidia will push Washington to close gaps in export restrictions. The United States restricts direct supplies of the most advanced AI accelerators to China, but Chinese companies can access them remotely by renting computing power in foreign data centers.
Chinese AI developers and cloud providers are trying to secure access to such capacity, including from operators in Southeast Asia, fearing future restrictions. The Nvidia scandal could speed up the adoption of the Remote Access Security Act (RASA). The House of Representatives approved it in January and now awaits consideration by the Senate. It will give the US Department of Commerce the authority to regulate remote access through cloud services to technologies subject to export controls.
At the same time, shares of Chinese semiconductor companies rose in price earlier in the week. According to investors’ calculations, tightening American restrictions could speed up the development of China’s own AI accelerators and reduce dependence on Nvidia. SMIC shares added 2.4% in Shanghai and 1.7% in Hong Kong, Hua Hong Semiconductor – 2.7%, chip equipment manufacturer Naura Technology – 3.1%. At trading on November 12, shares of AI accelerator developer Cambricon rose in price by more than 11%, and graphics processor manufacturer Moore Threads by about 7%.
If you notice an error, select it with the mouse and press CTRL+ENTER.
