BEIJING – US tech giant Nvidia said on Tuesday it will resume sales of its H20 artificial intelligence chips to China, after Washington pledged to remove licensing curbs that had put a stop to exports.
The California-based firm produces some of the world’s most advanced semiconductors but is not allowed to ship its most cutting-edge chips to China owing to concerns that Beijing could use them to boost its military capabilities.
It developed the H20 – a less powerful version of its AI processing units – specifically for export to China, although that plan hit the skids when the Trump administration firmed up export licence requirements in April.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it was “filing applications to sell the Nvidia H20 GPU again”.
“The US government has assured Nvidia that licences will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the statement said.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a video published by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Tuesday that “the US government has approved for us (to file) licences to start shipping H20s, and so we will start to sell H20s to the Chinese market”.
“I’m looking forward to shipping H20s very soon, and so I’m very happy with that very, very good news,” Huang, wearing his trademark black leather jacket, told a group of reporters.
Zhang Guobin, founder of the Chinese specialist website eetrend.com, said the resumption would “bring (Nvidia) substantial revenue growth, making up for the losses caused by the previous ban”.
It would also ease the impact of trade frictions on the global supply chain for semiconductors, he told AFP.
But he said Chinese firms would remain focused on domestic chip development, adding that “the Trump administration has been… prone to abrupt policy shifts, making it difficult to gauge how long such an opening might endure”.
Huang will attend a major supply chain gathering on Wednesday, the event organiser confirmed to AFP.
It will be his third trip to China this year, according to CCTV.