Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said he was unsure whether China would accept the company’s H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips should the US relax restrictions on sales of the processors, following a meeting on Wednesday with US President Donald Trump.
Huang said he and Trump talked about export controls, but declined to offer specifics. The meeting comes after Trump administration officials discussed whether to allow the H200 to be sold in China.
Asked whether authorities in Beijing would allow Chinese companies to buy the H200, Huang expressed uncertainty.
Photo: EPA
“We don’t know. We have no clue,” Huang said, as he headed into a closed-door meeting with members of the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, which has jurisdiction over export controls. “We can’t degrade chips that we sell to China, they won’t accept that.”
Meanwhile, Trump sidestepped questions about the status of export controls, but praised Huang as doing “an amazing job.”
Allowing H200 sales to China would mark a significant win for the world’s most valuable company, which has pressed the Trump administration and the US Congress for a relaxation of export controls that keep Nvidia from selling its AI chips in the world’s second-largest economy.
Huang’s Washington visit came as Nvidia neared a major lobbying win in the US Congress, where lawmakers kept a provision out of must-pass defense legislation that would have limited the company’s ability to sell its advanced AI chips to China and other adversary nations. The so-called GAIN AI Act would require chipmakers, including Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc, to give US customers first dibs on their powerful AI chips before selling in China and other arms-embargoed countries.
As the committee meeting concluded, Republican US Senator Mike Rounds acknowledged Nvidia’s desire to compete globally.
“They want the customers around the world,” Rounds said. “We understand that. And at the same time, we’re all concerned, including Jensen, with regard to having restrictions on what goes to China.”
This summer, Nvidia won approval to sell its less-powerful H20 chip, designed to fall just below existing export limits, but China promptly told potential domestic customers to shun the product and rely instead on processors made by Chinese companies.
More recent efforts by Nvidia to win US permission to export a hobbled version of its most advanced Blackwell-generation chip failed to materialize during a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
The H200, which began shipping to customers last year, is designed to train and run AI models. The prospect of selling a higher-caliber processor to China bolstered arguments by lawmakers from both parties who have pressed unsuccessfully for the GAIN AI Act’s adoption.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the banking panel, warned that allowing sales of the H200 to China would “turbocharge China’s military and undercut American technological leadership.”
In a letter on Wednesday to Lutnick, Warren urged the administration to maintain limits on sales of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips to China and expressed concern over what she called a lack of transparency in the decisionmaking on export controls.
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