Nvidia, AMD stocks fall on report of new U.S. ban on AI chip exports to China

Late Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported the Commerce Department could further block sales of AI chips to China unless U.S. companies first obtain a special license.

The ban would follow upon similar actions last year that threatened $400 million in Nvidia sales, but the company found a workaround in supplying a version of products that avoided the ban.

Read: AMD launches new data-center AI chips, software to go up against Nvidia and Intel

Both Nvidia and AMD have launched new AI chips this year: Nvidia in March and AMD earlier in the month. Last year’s release of Open AI’s ChatGPT generative AI — with billions of dollars invested by Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
+1.82%
— resulted in an explosion of interest in artificial-intelligence technology, prompting luminaries to herald the technology as the biggest thing in tech since … you name it.

Read: Bill Gates says AI is only the second revolutionary tech advancement in his lifetime

News of the possible ban happened to follow a claim earlier in the day from Baidu Inc.
BIDU,
+3.09%
on the Chinese search company’s blog, which said its Ernie 3.5 version AI outperformed ChatGPT’s earlier version “in comprehensive ability scores,” and its latest iteration, GPT-4, which was released in mid-March, “in several Chinese-language capabilities.”

Baidu’s claim appeared to be based upon performance metrics published in China Science Daily. On Wall Street, ADRs of Baidu were down 0.7% after hours, following a 3.1% gain to close at $143.90.

As of Tuesday’s close, Nvidia shares were up 187% in 2023, and AMD shares were up 70% for the year.

Read: Snowflake adds partnerships with Nvidia and Microsoft for AI double play

Shares of Super Micro Computer Inc.
SMCI,
+4.47%,
which have benefited from AI, also declined 3% after hours, while shares of Intel Corp.
INTC,
+2.28%,
which supplies chips to data centers, saw shares decline 1% after hours.