US chip giant Nvidia has revealed it will resume selling its H20 chips to China, following a ban imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration in April.
The move reverses a ban on AI chips being sent to China amid concerns the tech will be used to advance potentially dangerous AI models.
After previous export restrictions outlined by the Biden administration in 2023, Nvidia created the H20 chip specifically for the Chinese market. However, was told earlier this year by the current US administration that even this chip would no longer meet export rules.
It was then reported that Nvidia was developing a new chip named the B30 to circumvent these restrictions.
In a blog post, Nvidia said the US government has given the company license to restart sales of its Chinese-specific H20 chips in the region. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang has met with US policymakers and Chinese officials for the chips to be sold in China once more.
China is a top market for Nvidia, and news of the stricter regulations caused Nvidia stocks to dive – at the time, the company projected it would lose $5.5 billion.
This hasn’t impacted Nvidia’s success, as last week it became the first-ever company in the world to reach a market cap of $4 trillion, and is the world’s most lucrative firm.
From Uncertainty to Success
AI-related tensions between the US and China came to a head at the start of the year when DeepSeek, a Chinese LLM that rivalled US chatbots at a lower cost and with less powerful chips, came onto the scene.
News of DeepSeek sent Nvidia’s market cap crashing by $600 billion and sent shockwaves through global tech markets.
Since President Donald Trump came into office, the US government has engaged in heated tariff wars with China. However, trade tensions between the regions have started to relax, and the governments have reportedly reached a temporary truce.
