Nvidia reportedly shows China-specific B30 chips with 80% of the performance of the standard Blackwell GPU to the U.S. government — Nvidia CEO says approval is still up in the air

Reports suggest that Nvidia has already presented a B30 chip to the U.S. government for export approval to China. According to the Wall Street Journal, these talks began earlier this year, with the chip’s peak performance reaching only 80% of the standard Blackwell GPU's performance.

President Donald Trump has commented that he will allow Nvidia to ship a Blackwell if it's at least 30% less performant than the company’s top offering. “It is possible I would make a deal [on a] ‘somewhat enhanced in a negative way’ Blackwell processor,” Trump said to reporters. “In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it.” By comparison, the Nvidia HGX H20 is only around 50% of the performance of the full-fat H100, especially in multi-GPU setups.

The U.S. banned the sale of H20 in mid-April, resulting in a $5.5 billion write-off for Nvidia. However, it reversed this decision some three months later by issuing export licenses, allowing the company to resume sales in China in exchange for 15% of its sales in the country. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated that this was part of the negotiations for China to loosen its grip on rare-earth minerals — a crucial resource required to produce semiconductors, high-tech equipment, and defense technologies.

However, this was soon followed by warnings from Chinese state media saying that the H20 is unsafe and outdated, and the authorities have reportedly discouraged organizations, especially government bodies, from using it. All of this supposedly came from Sec. Lutnick’s abrasive ‘addiction’ comments, which the Chinese leadership called insulting. However, some experts say that Nvidia and its AI chips are being used as a political maneuvering tool by both sides, primarily as China and the U.S. are engaged in a trade war.

“If the U.S. government were to approve a powerful Blackwell for China, even at a 30-to-50% performance reduction,” said Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser to RAND Corporation, a think tank with offices in Washington, D.C. “My guess is we’d miraculously see China forget about security concerns.”

This is probably why we’ve seen claims that Nvidia is asking its suppliers to wind down H20 production. The company did not confirm this, though, only telling Tom’s Hardware that it constantly manages its supply chain to match market conditions. Still, the AI giant is working to prepare a next-generation offering for H2O. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has told reporters that the company is in talks with the United States government for this, but that the negotiations are still in the early stages.

We are yet to see if the White House will approve the sales of the B30 chip in its current iteration to China. Nvidia likely needs this to move forward to retain its leadership in the East Asian country, especially as Beijing appears to be successful in encouraging Chinese companies to reduce their reliance on H2O.

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