The Trump administration has given the green light to China-bound sales of Nvidia’s second most powerful AI chips, putting in place a rule that will likely kickstart shipments of the H200 despite deep concerns among China hawks in Washington.
According to the regulations, the chips will be reviewed by a third party testing lab to confirm their technical AI capabilities before they can be shipped to China, which cannot receive more than 50 per cent of the total amount of chips sold to American customers.
Nvidia will need to certify there are enough H200s in the US while Chinese customers must demonstrate “sufficient security procedures” and cannot use the chips for military purposes.
US President Donald Trump announced in December that he would allow the chip sales and collect a 25 per cent fee on such sales.
The decision drew fire from China hawks across the US political spectrum over concerns the chips would supercharge Beijing’s military and erode US advantage in artificial intelligence.
Such concerns had prompted the Biden administration to bar sales of advanced AI chips to China.
But the Trump administration, led by White House AI czar David Sacks, argues that shipping advanced AI chips to China discourages Chinese competitors like Huawei from redoubling efforts to catch up with Nvidia’s and AMD’s most-advanced chip designs.
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