In the recent fluctuations of the stock market, NVIDIA's stock price experienced dramatic volatility, with its market value shrinking by as much as $169.1 billion (approximately 1.2 trillion yuan) overnight. This news has not only left countless investors anxious but has also attracted widespread attention from the entire market.

The industry generally believes that this sharp decline may be related to the news that "China may restrict the procurement of Nvidia H20 chips."

(As of the time of writing, NVIDIA's stock price is still falling.)

According to the Financial Times, China's National Development and Reform Commission is working on a new policy: it suggests that Chinese companies prioritize the use of AI chips that meet higher energy efficiency standards when constructing or expanding data centers.

As one of the best-selling AI chips in the current market, NVIDIA's H20 chip is highly favored by Chinese AI industry chain companies due to its technological and ecological advantages. Despite the fact that this chip has had nearly 80% of its performance cut by the U.S. side, its order volume in the Chinese market has still seen significant growth driven by the DeepSeek craze.

Based on this, the report specifically points out that although Nvidia's H20 chip has been adjusted to comply with U.S. export control regulations, its performance is lower than that of high-end GPUs and fails to meet the new requirements proposed by China. Currently, due to the lack of strict enforcement of the relevant regulations, H20 chip sales in the Chinese market remain strong. However, if future regulations become stricter, Nvidia's business in the Chinese market, which amounts to $17.1 billion annually, may face severe challenges.

However, according to informed sources, in order to respond to this situation, NVIDIA is preparing to adjust the H20 chip to meet China's energy efficiency requirements. However, this technical adjustment may reduce the chip's efficiency and weaken its competitiveness in the Chinese market. At the same time, the U.S. may further tighten export restrictions on chips to China, and the H20 chip could even be included in a new regulation list. Under this dual pressure, NVIDIA's future prospects in the Chinese market are filled with uncertainty.

Although this potential policy change may bring significant losses to Nvidia, it presents a development opportunity for domestic alternatives. Due to the recent strong demand for DeepSeek in the market, companies such as Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance are significantly increasing their procurement of Nvidia's H20 chips to meet computing power demands. If relevant policies tighten in the future, these companies may turn to domestic alternatives. At that time, local products such as Huawei's Ascend series are expected to fill the market gap.

In the future, who will lead the new era of AI chips? Let's wait and see.