How New U.S. Chip Restrictions Could Hit China’s Smart Car and Cloud Firms

New U.S. export restrictions on certain microchips used for machine learning could distrupt China’s development of autonomous driving technology and data centers, market insiders fear.

In an order last week, U.S. officials said chip designers Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. would henceforth need approval from the American government before they can sell their cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese customers, in their latest attempt to keep advanced semiconductor technology out of the country’s hands.