Nvidia says it has Trump administration green light to sell China its advanced H20 computer chips used for AI

CBS News

5 days ago

Bangkok — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the technology giant has won approval from the Trump administration to sell its advanced H20 computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence to China — a reversal of administration policy.
The news came in a company blog post late Monday. Huang also spoke about the coup on China's state-run CGTN television network in remarks shown on X.
"The U.S. government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon," the post said.
"Today, I'm announcing that the U.S. government has approved for us filing licenses to start shipping H20s," Huang told reporters in Beijing. He noted that half of the world's AI researchers are in China.
"It's so innovative and dynamic here in China that it's really important that American companies are able to compete and serve the market here in China," he said.
Huang recently met with President Trump and other U.S. policymakers and is in Beijing this week to attend a supply chain conference and speak with Chinese officials.
The broadcast showed Huang meeting with Ren Hongbin, the head of the China Council for Promotion of International Trade, host of the China International Supply Chain Expo, in which Nvidia is an exhibitor.
Zhang Guobin, founder of the Chinese specialist website eetrend.com, told French news agency AFP the new policy would "bring (Nvidia) substantial revenue growth, making up for the losses caused by the previous ban," adding that it would also ease the impact of trade frictions on the global supply chain for semiconductors.
But he said Chinese firms stay focused on domestic chip development since "the Trump administration has been ... prone to abrupt policy shifts, making it difficult to gauge how long such an opening might endure."
Nvidia has profited enormously from the rapid adoption of AI, becoming the first company to have its market value surpass $4 trillion last week. However, the trade rivalry between the U.S. and China has been weighing heavily on the industry.
Washington has been tightening controls on exports of advanced technology to China for years, citing concerns that know-how meant for civilian use could be deployed for military purposes. The emergence of China's DeepSeek AI chatbot in January renewed concerns over how China might use the advanced chips to help develop its own AI capabilities.
In January, before Mr. Trump began his second term in office, the Biden administration launched a new framework for exporting advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence, an attempt to balance national security concerns about the technology with the economic interests of producers and other countries.
The White House announced in April that it would restrict sales of Nvidia's H20 chips and AMD's MI308 chips to China.
Nvidia had said the tighter export controls would cost the company an extra $5.5 billion, and Huang and other technology leaders have been lobbying Mr. Trump to reverse the restrictions. They argue that such limits hinder U.S. competition in a leading edge sector in one of the world's largest markets for technology.
They've also warned that U.S. export controls could end up pushing other countries toward China's AI technology.