Ball game’s over—the US is out of the AI chip market in China - Brookings

The United States' withdrawal from the Chinese AI chip market marks a new phase in US-China technological rivalry. Despite U.S. approval for NVIDIA's H200 chip sales to China, Chinese authorities have... Read original →

U.S. AI chip export controls have triggered irreversible tech decoupling. China’s 7nm chips—produced without EUV but via DUV multi-patterning and architectural innovation—have already enabled viable AI workloads, accelerating SMIC and HiSilicon’s push toward 3nm. Compliance burdens are forcing Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent to fully migrate AI stacks to domestic alternatives like Ascend and Cambricon, rendering even U.S.-approved H200 chips commercially irrelevant in China. Over the next 12–24 months, expect China to double down on Chiplet integration and near-memory computing to bypass advanced-node restrictions. Meanwhile, Washington’s overreach erodes NVIDIA’s pricing power globally: with 35% of AI chip demand originating from China, absence equals ceding technical standard-setting authority. This is no longer a performance race—it’s a battle for sovereign tech ecosystems.