Bloomberg reported the US Department of Commerce announced a plan to further curb the sale of AI chips to China from companies such as Nvidia in the coming weeks, in an attempt to close loopholes that emerged after chip export restrictions were put in place late last year.

CNBC reported the previous restrictions banned the sale of the Nvidia H100 graphics processing units (GPUs), which is the processor of choice for cloud providers and AI companies such as OpenAI.

Chinese companies were able to buy slower A800 processors that complied with the first round of restrictions, but CNBC reported the new rules will ban the sale of those chips as well.

It also stated the latest round of restrictions by the US could also impact the sale of chips by AMD and Intel.

Bloomberg reported US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo stated that while “it’s difficult to draw a bright line between military and commercial technology,” some of the same technologies could be used by US competitors “to modernise their military, surveil their citizens and solidify oppression.”

A representative for Nvidia told Mobile World Live that given the demand worldwide for its products, the company doesn’t expect a near-term meaningful impact on its financial results due to the new rules.

It noted in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing the new licensing requirement “may impact the company’s ability to complete development of products in a timely manner, support existing customers of covered products, or supply customers of covered products outside the impacted regions, and may require the company to transition certain operations out of one or more of the identified countries”.