Shares of China’s leading AI chip designers jumped on Thursday as turmoil at Nvidia raised hopes that domestic suppliers could gain ground if restrictions on the U.S. chipmaker’s China business tighten further.
Cambricon Technologies led the rally with a 9.8% gain in Thursday’s session, while MetaX climbed 7.9%, Moore Threads added 6.9% and Shanghai Biren Technology rose 6.7%, according to Dow Jones Newswires. The moves came after Nvidia shares fell more than 8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, following a Wall Street Journal report that its board was preparing to remove chief executive Jensen Huang.
The rally is a bet on opportunity, not a done deal. The gains reflect investor expectations that local suppliers could pick up business if Nvidia faces further curbs in China, not that they have already taken market share. U.S. export rules already limit Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips in China, and Nvidia itself has acknowledged that the restrictions have helped competitors build stronger customer and developer ecosystems there.
The pressure may be about to grow. Reuters reported Thursday that Chinese AI companies are rushing to rent Nvidia-powered computing capacity at data centers outside China, worried Washington could soon close the loophole that lets them access advanced chips remotely. The U.S. Commerce Department is considering a rule that would bar Chinese AI firms from remotely accessing advanced chips through overseas data centers, a proposal still under interagency review that could be announced during November and could cover seven additional countries, including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
The fear has political momentum behind it. The House of Representatives passed the Remote Access Security Act in January by 369 votes to 22. The bill would give the Commerce Department authority to regulate remote, cloud-based access to restricted technology, and it now awaits Senate action. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons have also asked the administration to preserve all records related to Nvidia’s exports to China.
The scramble is already visible in China’s grey market, where traders have started stockpiling restricted Nvidia processors, and in procurement records: Reuters found a blacklisted Chinese university bought two Nvidia H200 chips for about $123,000 last month despite sitting on a U.S. export blacklist. Meanwhile, Hong Kong-listed Chinese AI names moved the other way on Thursday: Alibaba fell as much as 7.1%, while AI model developers Z.AI and MiniMax dropped at least 7%, as investors worried tighter curbs would raise their costs.
The Bit Take: Nvidia’s crisis is redrawing the map of who supplies China’s AI boom. The irony is hard to miss: the same export controls meant to slow China down are now the best marketing its domestic chipmakers ever had. Cambricon and friends are still a long way from matching Nvidia’s hardware, and Thursday’s rally is a wager on politics, not performance. But wagers have a way of becoming self-fulfilling when governments keep dealing the cards. If Washington closes the remote-access loophole, China’s AI labs will have no choice but to buy local, and that is exactly the future Thursday’s buyers were pricing in.
Sources:
– Morningstar (Dow Jones Newswires) — Chinese Chip Stocks Rise as Nvidia Woes Put Focus on Domestic Suppliers: https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2026111110006/chinese-chip-stocks-rise-as-nvidia-woes-put-focus-on-domestic-suppliers
– Al Jazeera — Trump heads to China amid Nvidia scandal: Will he get tougher on Beijing?: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/12/trump-heads-to-china-amid-nvidia-scandal-will-he-get-tougher-on-beijing
– CIO Bulletin (Reuters) — Chinese AI firms rush to secure Nvidia chip capacity as U.S. curbs loom: https://ciobulletin.com/artificial-intelligence/usa/nvidia-chip-capacity-chinese-ai-firms-us-curbs
– EL7.AI (Dow Jones Newswires) — Chinese Chip Stocks Jump 9.8% as Investors Bet on Local Suppliers: https://el7.ai/en/news/2026-11-12-chinese-chip-stocks-rise-as-us-weighs-ai-cloud-access-restrictions
