[US Prepares to Block Overseas Chip Leasing Channels for Chinese AI Companies: 7 Countries Including Singapore Join the List, Targeting Nvidia's Top-Tier Blackwell Chip] Beating AI News Flash: The Trump administration is finalizing new AI chip export control rules, preparing to restrict Chinese AI companies from remotely using advanced chips such as Nvidia Blackwell through overseas data centers. The new rules are expected to be announced as early as this month and are currently undergoing inter-agency coordination. The new rules will include Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Norway, Brazil, and South Africa in a stricter chip export licensing system. Data centers operated by non-US companies in these countries will need to apply for a license from the US to import controlled AI chips such as Nvidia Blackwell and the latest generation Rubin, and will need to declare the recipient of the equipment and its end use, subject to ongoing monitoring. Data centers operated by US companies are conditionally exempt. As long as countries restricted by US arms embargoes, such as China and Russia, are prohibited from remotely using the relevant advanced chips, they do not need to apply for separate licenses to import these chips. However, they must still report the identity of their customers in the relevant countries and the scale of computing power used. Previously, while Chinese AI companies couldn't directly import some advanced chips, they could still lease GPU computing power from overseas data centers. Recently, Nvidia was reported to be requiring overseas cloud service providers to offer at least 51% of their services to non-Chinese customers, and Oracle was reported to have canceled a roughly $7 billion computing power leasing contract with Tencent under pressure from the US government. The US is now preparing to directly restrict the provision of advanced computing power from overseas data centers to Chinese companies through export licensing and customer disclosure systems. Faced with the risk of tightening policies, Chinese cloud service providers and AI labs are accelerating their reservations for overseas Nvidia computing power. [Original Link]