NVIDIA's H20 AI chips are now allowed to be exported to China, as the latest meeting between Jensen Huang and President Trump seems to have worked out.
NVIDIA's H20 AI GPUs Finally Starts to See Licensing Approval From the Commerce Department, Allowing Shipments to China
For those confused, NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, announced a few weeks ago that the company would be selling its H20 AI chips to China after approval from the Commerce Department, but back then, the Trump administration itself didn't give the green light. Now, according to a report by the FT, it is revealed that the US has started to issue licenses for NVIDIA's H20 AI chips to be shipped out to China, which means that Team Green is now free to export these chips to Beijing, resuming its business in the region, which was halted for several months.
The development comes after NVIDIA's Jensen Huang met President Trump a few days ago, and the license issuance is likely an aftermath of the meeting. It was revealed in a previous report that H20 AI chips were in a massive backlog, mainly due to the delay from the Commerce Department, and despite Team Green reassuring its commitment to China, no shipments were being approved by the US.
Not only this, but NVIDIA has also dodged a massive hurdle in the H20 AI chip exports to China, which was an impending investigation by a Chinese regulator. It was claimed that the newer shipments would have security backdoors or location tracking mechanisms within them, but NVIDIA clarified it as well, saying that the firm would never allow such backdoors to exist, despite pressures from US lawmakers. Resuming the China supply chain is Team Green's top priority right now.
Now that the H20 AI chips are starting to flow into China, it's likely that NVIDIA will rely on them until year-end before introducing newer solutions such as the Blackwell B20 or the RTX 6000D GPUs for the domestic markets. The firm currently has around 900,000 units of H20 AI chips in their inventory, which means that they would at least manage to cater to the write-offs made in the previous quarters.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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