Nvidia on Friday said it’s halting all product sales to Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. “We are not selling into Russia,” an Nvidia spokesperson told PCMag.
The company didn’t elaborate on why. But the spokesperson said the sales suspension covers all Nvidia products.
Other major US tech companies have also halted sales to Russia, citing the war in Ukraine. On Friday, Microsoft called the invasion “unlawful,” and announced it would suspend “all new sales” of company products to the country, which should include the Windows OS, Microsoft cloud services and the Xbox console.
The day before, both AMD and Intel also said they were halting all chip sales to Russia and Belarus, the country’s ally in the invasion of Ukraine. "We will continue to stand with the people of Ukraine and the global community in calling for an immediate end to this war and a swift return to peace,” Intel wrote in its own announcement.
The sales suspensions will probably make it harder for Russian-based users to build a PC from official retail channels in the country. But for now, it’s unclear if the stoppage means third-party companies in the PC ecosystem —such as laptop and GPU makers— will also halt product shipments to Russia.
So it’s possible Nvidia’s RTX 3000 cards could still be shipping to Russian retailers through graphics card vendors such as Gigabyte, MSI and Asus. We've reached out to them for comment, and we'll update the story if we hear back.
Earlier this week, Apple also stopped product sales and exports to Russia, further limiting the flow of consumer electronics to the country. Meanwhile, game developers such as Electronics Arts and CD Projekt RED have enacted their own sales bans against Russia.