BEIJING — Chinese language electrical automotive maker Nio joined others within the trade in saying that U.S. restrictions on Nvidia chip gross sales to China will not have an effect on the automaker’s enterprise.
Nvidia disclosed final week that the U.S. would require the chipmaker to get a license for future export to China for sure merchandise, in an effort to cut back the chance of them being utilized by the Chinese language army.
“We imagine this won’t have an effect on our enterprise operations,” William Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Nio, stated by way of the corporate’s translator throughout an earnings name Wednesday. That is in keeping with a StreetAccount transcript.
“Primarily based on our estimations, our computing energy is ample for our autonomous driving know-how improvement within the side of the AI coaching for now,” Li stated. “And we now have been working very intently with our associate Nvidia.”
The Nvidia Drive Orin chip has develop into a core a part of assisted driving tech for Nio and different electrical automotive corporations in China. An internet Nvidia weblog put up described how Nio’s new ES7 SUV got here with 4 such chips, together with one which enabled the automotive to be taught from particular person driver preferences.
The brand new U.S. restrictions goal Nvidia’s A100 and H100 merchandise, whose gross sales are a part of the corporate’s far bigger information heart enterprise. The merchandise are graphics processors that can be utilized for synthetic intelligence.
Li stated Wednesday there are numerous corporations in China with synthetic intelligence coaching chips, and that Nio is evaluating alternatives to work with completely different corporations.
However he stated the U.S. restrictions wouldn’t have an effect on Nio’s long-term technique.
Final week, automaker Geely stated it will not be affected by the brand new restrictions, as did autonomous driving start-ups WeRide and Pony.ai.
Earlier this week, Chinese language monetary information website Caixin reported that He Xiaopeng, chairman of electrical automotive start-up Xpeng, stated the restrictions would deliver challenges for all autonomous driving algorithm coaching on cloud computing platforms.
However he stated the corporate has purchased sufficient of the high-tech merchandise to fulfill demand for the approaching years, in keeping with the report. Caixin cited He is put up on a private WeChat account, which is analogous to a personal Fb information feed put up.
Xpeng didn’t instantly reply to a CNBC request for remark.
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.