US President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a review that could result in the first shipments to China of Nvidia’s second-most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) chips, five sources said, making good on his pledge to allow the sales.
Trump this month said he would allow sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, with the US government collecting a 25 percent fee.
The sales would help keep US firms ahead of Chinese chipmakers by cutting demand for Chinese chips.
Photo: Reuters
The move drew fire from China hawks across the political spectrum in the US over concerns the chips would supercharge Beijing’s military and erode the US’ advantage in AI.
However, questions have remained about how quickly Washington might approve such sales and whether Beijing would allow Chinese firms to purchase the Nvidia chips.
The US Department of Commerce, which oversees export policy, has sent license applications for the chip sales to the US departments of state, energy and defense for review, the sources said on condition of anonymity because the process is not public.
The agencies have 30 days to weigh in, according to export regulations.
One of the sources, an administration official, said that the review would be thorough and “not some perfunctory box we are checking.”
The final decision rests with Trump, the rules say.
The start of the inter-agency licensing review has not been reported previously.
The commerce department and Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A White House spokesperson did not comment on the review, but said “the Trump administration is committed to ensuring the dominance of the American tech stack — without compromising on national security.”
The administration of former US president Joe Biden had imposed a raft of restrictions on advanced AI chip sales to China and countries it feared could become conduits for smuggling into the nation, citing national security fears.
Trump’s move represents a departure from that policy and a dramatic reversal from his first term, when he drew international attention by cracking down on Chinese access to US technology.
At the time, he cited reports that Beijing steals US intellectual property and harnesses commercially obtained technology to bolster its military, allegations that Beijing denies.
Exporting large numbers of the chips to China would be “a significant strategic mistake,” said Chris McGuire, a former White House National Security Council official under Biden and senior fellow at the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations.
McGuire described the chips as “the one thing holding China back in AI.”
“I cannot possibly fathom how the departments of commerce, state, energy and defense could certify that exporting these chips to China is in the US’ national security interest,” he said.
Led by David Sacks, the White House AI adviser, several members of the Trump administration said that shipping advanced AI chips to China discourages Chinese competitors such as Huawei Technology Co (華為) from redoubling efforts to catch up with Nvidia’s and AMD’s most-advanced chip designs.
While the H200 chips are slower than Nvidia’s Blackwell chips at many AI tasks, they remain in wide use in the industry and have never been allowed for sale in China.
Trump had previously opened the door to sales of a less-advanced version of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, its cutting-edge offering, but backed away from the move and approved sales of the H200 instead.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS