WASHINGTON—The Trump administration plans to allow Nvidia to export its H200 chip to China, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest twist in the artificial-intelligence chip designer’s efforts to maintain access to the world’s second-largest economy.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang
Description
The Commerce Department plans to approve a license for Nvidia to sell its H200 to China. One of the people said the chip’s performance is higher than the H20 that was previously allowed to be sold — but it’s not as powerful as the company’s top Blackwell products released this year, nor the Rubin-generation chips coming next year. Semaphore had earlier reported the expected approval.
People familiar with the matter said the move followed a meeting last week between President Trump and Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang, where the pair discussed H200 exports. Nvidia shares rose more than 1%.
Administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, pressured Nvidia to sell Blackwell chips to China ahead of a recent trade meeting between Trump and China’s Xi Jinping.
People familiar with the discussions said some officials, including AI czar David Sachs and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, have supported exporting the H200 because it could be a good deal that allows Nvidia to compete with China’s Huawei Technologies in AI without overtaking the US.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration approved H20 exports to China in exchange for 15% of sales to the US government, only for China to tell its companies not to use the chips due to alleged security concerns. Some analysts saw the Chinese message as a negotiating tactic to get a better chip like the H200. It is unclear whether the 15% agreement will apply to H200 sales.
Context
Nvidia is waging a full-court press before the Trump administration and lawmakers this year, seeking permission to ship its valuable chips around the world and arguing that exports will ensure American technology dominance.
The company has angered some administration officials and others in Washington who feel it is prioritizing sales profits over national-security concerns.
“This decision to authorize the sale of the H200 to China is very short-sighted,” said Aaron Bartnik, a former White House technology and security official during the Biden administration who is now at Columbia University. He said he believed the move would significantly expand China’s chip capabilities and did not appear to give the United States any significant benefit in exchange for allowing exports.
The think tank Institute for Progress estimates that the H200 is about six times more powerful than the H20. New generations of a company’s products are often dramatically improved. The Biden administration imposed export restrictions on key chips, which many analysts credit with limiting China’s domestic semiconductor and AI capabilities.
what will happen next
Investors will be watching China’s reaction to the expected H200 approvals and what the US gets in return.
The move could contribute billions of dollars to Nvidia’s sales and help the Chinese tech giant that has been struggling to get top chips to train its models. Huang has argued that Nvidia should be allowed to compete in the Chinese market because the country has many of the world’s top AI researchers and the US should allow them to use American technology.
Huang also made it clear that the scale of demand for AI in China makes the country important to the company’s future. “You are not going to replace China,” Huang said at an event last week at the think tank CSIS.
Write to Amrit Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com and Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com.
