Nvidia Stock Climbs Premarket, Brushing Off Report Of Chinese Customs Crackdown On AI Chips: Retail Chatter Grows

Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) investors have largely shrugged off a negative China headline, signaling that the stock’s record-setting rally will likely continue. In Friday’s early premarket session, the stock climbed about 0.50%.

A Financial Times report, citing three people familiar with the matter, stated early Friday that China, a key market for Nvidia, increased surveillance of domestic ports, deploying teams of customs officers in the past few weeks to intercept semiconductor shipments from overseas.

The additional scrutiny aimed to curb Nvidia’s China-specific chip usage by state enterprises and other government agencies. It is also seen as a step to encourage domestic companies to develop their own technology and not rely merely on U.S. imports, and in the process help the country close its gap with the U.S.

After the previous Biden administration restricted exports of Nvidia’s high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) chips on security grounds, the company developed a stepped-down version of the same, dubbed H20. Nvidia suffered a further setback when the Trump administration banned H20 exports to China in April, although the Commerce Department has since then begun issuing licenses to Chinese companies to import these chips.

Nvidia’s stock hit new intraday and closing highs on Thursday, thanks to CEO Jensen Huang’s recent positive comments on AI technology, and reports of the company obtaining initial licenses to export chips to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Chinese government is reportedly targeting Nvidia’s H20 and RTX Pro 6000D chips that are designed to comply with U.S. export controls. Previously, the country did not meticulously prevent imports of these chips as long as appropriate duties were paid at the border. 

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment toward Nvidia stock remained ‘neutral’ as of early Friday, but the message volume increased to ‘high’ levels.

For the year-to-date period, Nvidia stock has gained 43.5%.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

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