After all, advanced Nvidia AI chips could be heading back to China.
As first reported by Semafor, the Commerce Department plans to allow Nvidia to ship its H200 chips to China to approved customers in China. The US will receive 25% of these sales, CNBC reports.
The H200 chip is much more advanced than the H20 chip that Nvidia developed specifically for the Chinese market, but Semafor reports that the company can only ship the roughly 18-month-old H200.
An Nvidia spokesperson told TechCrunch about the development: “We applaud President Trump’s decision to allow the U.S. chip industry to compete to support America’s high-wage jobs and manufacturing. Making the H200 available to commercial customers, vetted and approved by the Department of Commerce, strikes a great balance for the United States.”
The report comes a week after U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the decision on exporting these H200 chips to China is in the hands of President Donald Trump.
The decision to send the chips to China conflicts with Congress’ concerns about national security.
Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware introduced a bill on December 4th that would block exports of advanced AI chips to China for more than two years.
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The Safe and Enabled Exports (SAFE) Chip Act would require the Department of Commerce to deny licenses to export advanced AI chips to China for 30 months. It’s unclear when lawmakers will vote on the bill, especially now that the Trump administration has given the green light to sell the H200 chip.
Congress has long made it clear that cutting-edge AI chips will be exported across the aisle to China, but President Trump is on the fence about whether to allow the exports.
In April, the Trump administration imposed licensing requirements on semiconductor companies such as Nvidia to export chips to China, before formally rescinding in May the Biden administration’s proliferation rules restricting the export of AI chips. Over the summer, the U.S. government suggested that companies could start sending tips to China as long as the government would take a 15% cut of all revenue, as tips would become a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with China.
But at that point, the market for U.S.-developed chips in China was tense.
In September, China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration, banned domestic companies from purchasing Nvidia chips, leaving domestic companies to rely on less advanced domestic chips from Alibaba and Huawei.
President Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Monday that Chinese President Xi Jinping “reacted positively” to the latest news from the late 2000s.
This article was updated on December 8, when the proposed decision was confirmed.
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