Nvidia chief Jensen Huang said that he’s uncertain whether Beijing would allow Chinese companies to purchase Nvidia chips if the company were allowed to sell them there. Huang said this in a statement to reporters after meeting U.S. President Donald Trump, where they talked about export control issues, according to Bloomberg. There has been some talk in Washington about the possibility of letting the AI GPU giant export its last-generation H200 chip to China, especially after Congress reportedly rejected the GAIN AI Act, which would have forced Nvidia to prioritize shipments to domestic companies.
“We don’t know. We have no clue,” Huang said when asked whether the company would be able to sell the H200 in China. “We can’t degrade chips that we sell to China, they won’t accept that.” The Biden administration has previously banned the export of this AI chip to Beijing, citing security concerns, especially its use in military applications. It was eventually replaced by the H20, which, even though it had limited capabilities versus Nvidia’s then top-of-the-line chip, still offered formidable performance.
This talk of finally allowing Nvidia to export fully-fledged H200 chips into China legally would be a major win for the company, especially as Huang has been lobbying for this and has been vocal against export controls. Nevertheless, even if the White House finally allows Nvidia to sell the unshackled version of its Hopper GPUs, it still wouldn’t be a full 180 turn for Washington, as administration officials say that its rival can only have AI chips once they’re outdated. And while the H200 is still a relatively powerful AI chip, it has since been supplanted by the arrival of the B200 chips.
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