Donald Trump has cleared the way for Nvidia to begin selling its powerful AI computer chips to China, marking a win for the chip maker and its CEO, Jensen Huang, who has spent months lobbying the White House to open up sales in the country.
Before Monday’s announcement, the US had prohibited sales of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China over national security concerns.
Trump posted to Truth Social on Monday: “I have informed President Xi, of China, that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China, and other Countries, under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security. President Xi responded positively!”
Trump said the Department of Commerce was finalising the details and that he was planning to make the same offer to other chip companies, including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel. Nvidia’s H200 chips are the company’s second most powerful, and far more advanced than the H20, which was originally designed as a lower-powered model for the Chinese market that would not breach restrictions, but which the US banned anyway in April.
The president said the US would receive 25% of the proceeds, more than the 15% previously agreed to with Nvidia in an earlier deal to lift restrictions. This deal follows similar unorthodox plans for the federal government to take a financial cut from private business dealings. In August, Trump said the US would receive a 10% stake in the tech company Intel. Some lawmakers have questioned the legality of such arrangements.
According to the Hill, the Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Andy Kim of New Jersey sent letters to the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, last week outlining their concerns over selling these chips to China and saying it risked powering the country’s “surveillance, censorship and military applications”.
They wrote: “I urge you to stop ignoring the input of bipartisan members of Congress and your own experts in order to cut deals that trade away America’s national security.”
On social media, Warren called for Huang to appear before Congress to testify under oath.
Huang has worked closely with Trump since the inauguration and has made several trips to the White House. The CEO attended the president’s AI summit in July, met Trump as recently as last week and was even a guest at the White House dinner for the Saudi crown price, Mohammed bin Salman. Huang has pledged to invest $500bn in AI infrastructure in the US over the next four years.
Huang has visited China several times, meeting officials and Chinese tech executives, as US bans were variously lifted and reintroduced. Earlier this year, China imposed its own controls on the imports of Nvidia chips, with top tech firms reportedly instructed to cancel orders, citing national security concerns and confidence in China’s domestic chip development.
In October, Huang said Nvidia has gone from having 95% of the Chinese market to having none, and called the bans a “strategic mistake”.
Selling chips to China, the world’s second largest economy, could now mean a windfall worth billions of dollars for Nvidia, which is already valued at $4.5tn.
An Nvidia spokesperson said: “We applaud President Trump’s decision.” He said offering the H200 chips “to approved commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America”.
The Nvidia spokesperson and Trump said the move would support US jobs and manufacturing.
In his Truth Social post, Trump condemned the Biden administration’s policies, which imposed strict export controls on powerful chips. The Biden administration had said withholding such technology from China bolstered US competition, protected national security and hampered AI development in China.
“That Era is OVER!” Trump wrote. “My Administration will always put America FIRST.”
On Tuesday afternoon, China’s foreign ministry said it had noted the reports. “China has always adhered to the principle that China and the United States can achieve mutual benefit and win-win results through cooperation,” the spokesperson said. A final decision from Beijing is still in the works, according to a report from the Financial Times. The newspaper said regulators may still opt to limit access to H200 chips in China so that the country can continue to focus on its own technology.
Ma Jihua, a telecom industry analyst, told the state media outlet the Global Times that years of US curbs on AI exports had “provided a rare chance of China’s domestic chip industry to grow and catch up”.
