Nvidia says Trump administration lifts ban on AI chip sales to China

Nvidia said the U.S. government is allowing the Silicon Valley giant to sell its artificial intelligence chips to China, reversing course after banning the sales in April.

The company said in a blog post Monday that it is filing applications to sell its H20 chips to China with the U.S. government, which, it said, has assured the company that they will grant licenses.

Nvidia said it “hopes to start deliveries soon.” It also announced a new chip which is “fully compliant” for Chinese customers.

The White House did not immediately confirm Nvidia’s statement. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian declined to comment on the specific announcement on Tuesday, but said that China opposes the “weaponization” of technology and trade issues as disrupting “the stability of the industrial supply chain.”

The announcement comes as Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, is visiting Beijing this week, after meeting President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday.

The development underscores the firm’s attempt to straddle the U.S. and China, even as the two largest economies in the world struggle to manage trade tensions and competition over critical technologies like artificial intelligence.

“Nvidia’s story and its position is shared by countless American corporates who find themselves caught in the crosshairs of the U.S.-China geopolitical competition,” said Ryan Fedasiuk, a former tech policy adviser in the U.S. State Department’s Office of China Coordination in the Biden administration.

“But Nvidia may be unique in that it is such an important company for the global economy and for American national security,” he said.

Nvidia, which became the first publicly traded company to close at a $4 trillion market capitalization this month, makes chips necessary to train the most advanced AI models.

China is an important market for the firm: It is home to a slew of leading artificial intelligence firms and a rich ecosystem of developers. About 13% of Nvidia’s revenue came from China last year, according to company filings.

But Nvidia’s business in China has spurred concern in Washington, where some are concerned that selling chips to China could be helping Beijing’s military and could degrade the U.S.’ position in global high-tech competition.

U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks emphasized those concerns in a letter on Friday to Huang about his trip to China, asking the executive not to meet with any companies working with China’s “military or intelligence establishment.”

Huang has been dismissive of those concerns and criticized Washington’s export controls.

Asked in an interview with CNN on Sunday about the possibility of Nvidia’s chips being used by Chinese military and intelligence, Huang said: “We don’t have to worry about that.”

He also argued that in order for the U.S. to maintain AI leadership, American technology needs to remain the “global standard” and used by developers all across the world.

Not everyone agrees with this argument. “It’s very hard to disentangle China’s AI ambitions for the commercial space from the military space,” said a former U.S. Commerce Department official who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters.

“Jensen has been very clear that he doesn’t see a military nexus to what he sells,” the former official said, but “there was plenty of open source and classified intelligence showing that the PLA was working quite hard to get its hands on these chips,” using the abbreviation for China’s People’s Liberation Army.

The Trump administration’s reversal also comes amid broader trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing.

The Trump administration pledged to lift some recent export controls on China intrade talks with Beijing amid a damaging tariff showdown between the two countries. It’s unclear if the decision on Nvidia is connected to trade talks.

Overall, Trump’s more unpredictable and “transactional” approach to export controls is concerning to international partners, said Chiang Min-yen, deputy director for economic security at Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET), a Taipei think tank. These partners are also needed to effectively limit China’s access to technology.

“We need the long term commitment from the U.S. side to coordinate these likeminded countries to achieve the same strategic goal, but that is not what we see it at this moment,” he said.

Huang’s visit to China this week – his third this year – includes visits with government and industry leaders, according to the company. He will also hold a news conference on Wednesday. In April, Huang met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Beijing.

An article published Tuesday in the Paper, a Chinese state-run outlet, said Huang’s visits “reaffirm his commitment to the Chinese market at a critical moment.”

Though Chinese tech firms are likely cheering Washington’s new policy, Beijing is also attempting to reduce reliance on oversees technology like Nvidia chips and develop homegrown alternatives through Chinese giants like Huawei Technologies.

“China is in a weird position because they continue to be dependent on Nvidia and its product lines to sustain near-term growth in China’s AI industry,” said Fedasiuk. “But I think it should be clear to Nvidia that the company is dispensable in China. China is actively pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into an effort to dispense with Nvidia in its market.”