Elaine Krutenbach and Wyatt Grantham Phillips, The Associated Press
BANGKOK (AP) – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the tech giant has approved by the Trump administration to sell the advanced H20 computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence in China.
The news came late Monday in a company blog post. This said the US government “guarantees” that the license will be granted and that the company said it would “want to start deliveries immediately.” Shares of the California-based chipmaker had risen more than 4% by noon Tuesday.
Huang also spoke about the coup of China’s state-run CGTN television network in the remarks presented to X.
“Today, I am announcing that the US government has approved the US submission to submit a license to begin shipping on H20,” Huang told reporters in Beijing.
He added that half of the world’s AI researchers are in China. “It’s really important that American companies compete here and be able to contribute to the market here because it’s so innovative and dynamic here,” he said.
Han recently met with President Donald Trump and other US policymakers. I’m in Beijing this week attending a supply chain meeting and talking to Chinese officials. The broadcast marked the Huang meeting with Ren Hongbin, head of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade in China, host of China International Supply Chain Expo, where Huang was present. Nvidia is an exhibitor.
Nvidia has been profiting heavily from the rapid adoption of AI, becoming the first company to surpass its market value last week by $4 trillion. However, trade competition between the US and China is weighing heavily in the industry.
This is what we know.
What is Nvidia’s H20 chip?
The H20 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is an advanced AI chip. This is the type of device used to build and update the scope of an AI system. However, it is less powerful than Nvidia’s top semiconductors today.
This is because the H20 chip was developed specifically to comply with US restrictions for exporting AI chips to China. With more computing power, Nvidia’s most sophisticated chips are off limits for the Chinese market.
Over the years, Washington has strengthened its control over the export of advanced technologies to China, citing concerns that know-how for civilian use could be deployed for military purposes. And in January, before President Trump began his second term in office, President Joe Biden’s administration launched a new framework for exporting sophisticated computer chips used to develop AI to balance national security concerns about technology with the economic interests of producers and other countries.
Limitations on the sale of advanced chips to China have been at the heart of AI races between the two biggest economic forces of the world, but such management is also controversial. Advocates argue that these restrictions are necessary to slow China down enough to allow businesses to maintain their lead. Opponents, meanwhile, say there are loopholes in export controls, which could still spur innovation. The emergence of China’s Deepseek AI chatbot in January raised particularly new concerns about how China will use advanced chips to develop its own AI capabilities.
What happened since Trump took office?
In April, the White House announced that it would limit sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips to China, as well as MI308 chips from advanced micro devices from rival chip manufacturers.
At the time, Nvidia said these more stringent export controls would cost an extra $5.5 billion. And Huang and other technology leaders have been lobbying Trump to reverse restrictions since. They argued that such restrictions have hampered US competition in the sector, one of the world’s largest technology markets, and warned that US export control could push other countries into Chinese AI technology.
Monday’s announcement from Nvidia shows that its lobbying has paid off. White House AI and crypto advisor David Sachs told Bloomberg on Tuesday that allowing NVIDIA to resume sales of H20 chips in China would help the US compete better, particularly with Chinese chip maker Huawei Technologies.
Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC on Tuesday that the updated sales of H20 chips in China were linked to a trade agreement between the two countries of rare earth magnets.
Still, it is persisting among US lawmakers on either side of the aisle, calling for stricter chip export restrictions to China.
Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks wrote to Huang, noting that hardware that powers advanced AI is “very strategically important.” And once again warned that this kind of technology could be used to accelerate Beijing’s efforts to modernize the military if it was exported freely. U.S. lawmakers also suggest that chips covered by export control should be tracked to avoid ending in the wrong place.
Beyond export controls, California-based Nvidia, like other tech giants today, is caught up in the crosshairs of Trump’s tariff war overseas, especially amid the taxation of the US China. However, Beijing and Washington recently agreed to pull back some non-tariff restrictions. China says Washington has approved rare earth magnets to be exported to the US while removing the curbs in its chip design software and jet engines.
Nvidia and its CEO have also won Trump’s favor in recent months. In April, the company announced it would be producing the first AI chip in the United States, starting with more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test Arizona’s specialized Blackwell chips and Texas AI supercomputers.
Trump quickly praised Nvidia’s move. He introduced Huang as a “smart cookie” who helped bring jobs to the US at the “Invest in America” event held at the White House later that month.
Like Nvidia, AMD is currently poised to resume sales of its Mi308 chips in China. The California-based company said in a statement that the Commerce Department is proceeding with licensing applications for these exports to China and plans to resume shipping as those licenses have been approved.
Grantham-Philips reported from New York. Contributors were Washington, D.C. AP writer Diditan, Matt O’Brien, Providence, Rhode Island, and AP researcher Yu Bing, from Beijing.
Original issue: July 15th, 2025, 6:08pm EDT
