Nvidia is preparing to resume sales of its AI chips to China, following months of uncertainty caused by shifting U.S. export regulations. In a new statement, the company revealed it has filed applications to restart shipments of its H20 chips and expects to receive government licenses soon.
The H20 chip, while not Nvidia’s most powerful, is the highest-performance processor the company can legally export to China under current restrictions. It’s optimized for AI inference tasks and has been in high demand by major Chinese tech firms such as Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent, who stockpiled units earlier this year amid regulatory tensions.
In addition to the H20, Nvidia is launching a new “RTX Pro” chip tailored for China. The company describes it as fully compliant with export rules and ideal for industrial AI applications like smart logistics and factory automation.
The renewed green light comes after months of regulatory back-and-forth. In April, the Trump administration blocked sales of the H20 due to its high memory and I/O bandwidth, threatening to wipe out up to $16 billion in Nvidia revenue. But soon after a high-profile $1 million-per-seat dinner at Mar-a-Lago attended by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the ban was paused. Reports suggest the U.S. reversed course following Nvidia’s promise to invest heavily in American AI infrastructure — up to $500 billion over four years.
Still, the reversal has sparked criticism in Washington. Lawmakers argue that relaxing chip restrictions weakens U.S. efforts to limit China’s AI growth, especially after Chinese startup DeepSeek gained international attention with a model trained on earlier Nvidia chips.
Nvidia spokesperson Hector Marinez confirmed that CEO Huang has been meeting with U.S. and Chinese officials this month, emphasizing AI’s global benefits. Yet the back-and-forth reflects ongoing U.S. tensions between economic priorities and national security concerns — a balancing act that’s likely to continue through 2025.
Source: techcrunch.com
Published: 2025-07-15 04:36:00
