US to allow Nvidia H200 chip shipments to China
The US government will allow Nvidia to export its H200 AI chips to China, charging a fee for each chip.
Nvidia shares rose 1.2 percent in after-hours trading after U.S. President Donald Trump made the announcement on Truth Social and closed up 3.16 percent after Semaphore first reported the possibility of approval.
Trump said he informed Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose Nvidia chips are under government review, about the move and he “responded positively,” according to Trump’s post.
Trump said the US Department of Commerce was finalizing details of the deal and that the same approach would apply to other AI chip companies such as Advanced Micro Devices and Intel.
“We will protect National Security, create American jobs, and maintain America’s leadership in artificial intelligence,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“NVIDIA’s US Customers are already moving forward with incredible, highly advanced Blackwell chips, and soon Rubin will no longer be part of that deal.”
Authorizing the shipments could signal a friendlier approach to China after Trump and Xi agreed to a truce in the two countries’ trade and technology war in Busan, South Korea, in late October.
Administration officials view the move as a compromise between sending Nvidia’s newest Blackwell chips to China, which Trump has not authorized, and not sending any U.S. chips to China, a person familiar with the matter said. Officials believe this will support Huawei’s efforts to sell AI chips in China.
China hawks in Washington worry that selling more advanced AI chips to China could help Beijing strengthen its military; These fears initially led to restrictions on such exports by the Biden administration.
Previous media reports of H200 export approvals had drawn harsh criticism from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who has supported a bipartisan effort to reserve powerful U.S. AI chips for U.S. firms.
“Following his backroom meeting with Donald Trump and his company’s donation to the Trump ballroom, (Nvidia) CEO Jensen Huang followed through on his wish to sell to China the most powerful AI chip we’ve ever sold,” Warren said in a statement.
“This risks furthering China’s drive for technological and military dominance and undermining the economic and national security of the United States.”
The H200 chip, introduced two years ago, has higher bandwidth memory than its predecessor, the H100, allowing it to process data faster.
H200 will be nearly six times more powerful than H20, the most advanced AI semiconductor that can be legally exported to China, after the Trump administration lifted its brief ban on such sales this year, according to a report released Sunday by the nonpartisan think tank Institute for Progress.
The report also stated that exporting the chip would allow Chinese AI laboratories to create AI supercomputers with performance similar to leading US AI supercomputers, albeit at higher costs.
Faced with Beijing’s strong use of export controls on rare earth minerals critical to producing a range of technology products, Trump this year threatened new restrictions on technology exports to China but ultimately rolled them back in most cases.
China’s cybersecurity regulator has summoned Nvidia to a meeting to clarify whether its H20 AI chip poses any backdoor security risks, Reuters reported in August; Nvidia denied this claim.
with AP
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