US President Donald Trump has said Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chips shall continue to be kept out of China. When Norah O’Donnell of CBS’ 60 Minutes specifically asked the US president about allowing Nvidia to sell their most advanced chips in China, Trump said “No, we won’t do that. We will let them [China], uh, deal with Nvidia.”
During the extended version of his latest CBS 60 Minutes interview, US president Donald Trump also said, “The most advanced [AI chips], we will not let anybody have them other than the United States” (via Reuters). It’s surprising, not just considering the fact that Nvidia is the first company in the world to reach a $5 trillion valuation, but also company CEO Jensen Huang’s recent comments that the US needs to “go compete” with its AI chips in China.
Trump’s comments are surprising in part as they follow hot on the heels of news that the US president and Chinese president Xi Jinping have agreed on a one-year trade truce at the end of last month. Apparently, the subject of the Blackwell chips simply never came up during these trade talks. These latest comments also don’t rule out all of Nvidia’s chips being sold in China, with Trump saying back in August that he’d consider making “a deal [with a] somewhat enhanced—in a negative way—Blackwell.” That is, a much less powerful version of the current chip.
Prior to the current US administration, Nvidia had previously spent many decades conducting business in China. However, the company’s business relationship with China has become increasingly strained in recent years, with company CEO Jensen Huang even saying that, as of October, “We are 100% out of China…we went from 95% market share to 0%.”
According to Reuters, Huang said last week at a developers’ event the company has abstained from seeking US export licenses to sell in China because “[Beijing has] made it very clear that they don’t want Nvidia to be there right now.” For example, back in September, the Cyberspace Administration of China had previously banned some of the country’s biggest tech companies from buying the RTX Pro 6000D (which was specifically designed for the Chinese market).
Nvidia had previously described this as ‘a $2 billion to $5 billion potential opportunity‘. As such, it’s perhaps no surprise that Nvidia has since signed AI development ‘prosperity deals’ with Japan and South Korea.
As for China, the country may have already begun as it means to go on, with data centre operators recently instructed to source more than 50% of chips from domestic manufacturers in a bid to not only break away from US tech but to win the AI arms race with homegrown hardware.
