The White House has reportedly notified other federal agencies that it will not allow Nvidia to sell its latest scaled-down artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, The Information reported Thursday, citing three people familiar with the matter.
The move signals Washington’s continued efforts to limit China’s access to cutting-edge AI hardware. At the same time, this crackdown on foreign AI chips has also dealt a major blow to Nvidia’s hopes of regaining its lost Chinese market share, a concern that CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly expressed.
While US President Donald Trump believes that restricting Nvidia’s AI chip sales to Beijing will help America win the global AI race, Jensen Huang disagrees, warning that China could eventually overtake the United States.
Key chip details and market need
Before the White House’s decision, Nvidia had already provided samples of the B30A chip to several of its Chinese customers, according to the report.
The chip in question is known as the B30A. Despite being a “scaled down” version, it is still powerful enough to be effectively used to train large language models when organized in large clusters — a critical capability required by many Chinese technology companies, the report added.
What is Nvidia up to now?
Nvidia is not giving up on the Chinese market just yet, as the company is actively working to modify the B30A design in hopes that the US administration will reconsider its current position, the report said, citing two company employees.
A Nvidia spokesperson confirmed the competitive environment in China, telling Reuters that the company currently has “zero share of the highly competitive Chinese data center computing market and does not include it in our guidance.” The US chip giant had a 95% market share in Beijing in 2022.
Huang has previously warned of the downsides of missing out on the Chinese market. He emphasized the importance of maintaining connections with China’s ecosystem, noting that the country is home to nearly half of the world’s AI researchers.
“I think it’s a mistake for these researchers not to build AI on American technology,” he said earlier.
China bans Nvidia’s AI chips
The announcement comes just days after the Chinese government issued official guidelines mandating that new data center projects receiving state funds use domestic AI chips, Reuters reports.
Foreign-made semiconductor chips currently in use in China include Nvidia’s H20, B200, and H200 chips.
According to the report, Chinese authorities have ordered data centers that are less than 30% complete to throw out all foreign-made chips or cancel their plans to buy them. However, for some projects that are already at an advanced stage, the decision to remove all foreign-made chips will be made on a case-by-case basis.
US President Donald Trump said in an interview last week that the United States would let China “deal with Nvidia”, but not in terms of the most advanced chips. According to the agency report, China’s crackdown on foreign AI chips will reduce Nvidia’s hopes of gaining its Chinese market share.
