US President Donald Trump says Nvidia is now allowed to sell higher-end chips to China, but only to approved customers in the country, and with a 25% export tariff charged by the US.
The chips in question are the H200, the second-best Nvidia has to offer. Chinese companies still can’t legally get the best ones, the Blackwell B200 chips. But the H200 is still far more capable than the H20, developed specially to comply with previous export restrictions to China. The H20 was until now the only chip that Nvidia could sell to approved buyers in China.
Nvidia H200
The H200 is said to be six times faster than the H20 for some tasks, but the B200 is almost ten times faster than the H200. While Chinese companies can’t officially get the B200, reports say over $1 billion worth of B200 chips have already made their way to China through black market deals.
While Chinese companies do now legally have access to higher-end Nvidia chips, it’s unclear how many will buy these, since the Chinese government has repeatedly told local companies not to use US technology. Huawei is racing to catch up with Nvidia and AMD in three years, though how plausible that actually is remains a contentious topic.
