US President Donald Trump’s administration is considering green-lighting sales of Nvidia Corp’s H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China as a bilateral detente boosts prospects for exports of advanced US technology to China, people familiar with the matter said.
The US Department of Commerce, which oversees US export controls, is reviewing a change to its policy of barring sales of such chips to China, the sources said, stressing that plans could change.
The White House and the commerce department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Photo: EPA
Nvidia did not comment directly on the review, but said current regulation does not allow the company to offer a competitive AI data center chip in China, leaving that massive market to its rapidly growing foreign competitors.
The possibility signals a friendlier approach to China, after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last month brokered a trade and tech war truce in Busan, South Korea.
China hawks in Washington are concerned that shipments of more advanced AI chips to China could help Beijing supercharge its military, fears that prompted the former US president Joe Biden’s administration to set limits on such exports.
Faced with Beijing’s muscular use of export controls on rare earth minerals, critical for producing a raft of tech goods, Trump this year threatened new restrictions on tech exports to China, but ultimately rolled them back in most cases.
The H200 chip, unveiled two years ago, has more high-bandwidth memory than its predecessor, the H100, allowing it to process data more quickly.
It is estimated to be twice as powerful as Nvidia’s H20 chip, the most advanced AI semiconductor that can legally be exported to China, after the Trump administration reversed its short-lived ban on such sales earlier this year.
Earlier last week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whom Trump has described as a “great guy,” was among the guests at the White House during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s visit.
The US Department of Commerce last week announced that it had approved shipments of the equivalent of up to 70,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips, Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip, to Saudi Arabia’s AI start-up Humain and G42 of the United Arab Emirates.
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