According to media reports on Wednesday citing sources, after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attended a luxurious dinner at Mar-a-Lago last Friday, the Trump administration is expected to alter its plan to restrict Nvidia's export of the H20 artificial intelligence chip to China. Under US export controls, the H20 chip is the most advanced AI chip that US companies can legally sell to the Chinese market. It is also a chip specifically designed for the Chinese market in response to US export control policies.
The report stated that the White House had been considering restricting the export of the H20 chip for months, with the original plan set to be implemented as early as this week. However, after the Mar-a-Lago dinner, the White House changed its stance and shelved the plan to further restrict the export of the H20 chip to China.
The report also mentioned that
the White House changed its plan because Nvidia promised the Trump administration that it would make new investments in artificial intelligence data centers in the US. China is one of Nvidia's key markets. Nvidia has long opposed the US expansion of chip export controls to China. Financial reports show that in the fiscal year ending January 26, 2025, Nvidia's annual revenue was approximately $130.5 billion, with revenue from China reaching $17.108 billion, the highest in history. In January of this year, it was reported that the Trump administration was considering expanding restrictions on Nvidia's chip sales to China to include the H20. That same month, Chinese tech company DeepSeek launched a groundbreaking artificial intelligence chatbot, shocking the world. The H20 is one of the chips used by DeepSeek, and the rapid advancement of Chinese AI technology has created a sense of crisis among US politicians.
Since then, US lawmakers have been pressuring the Trump administration to impose stricter restrictions on cutting-edge technologies related to artificial intelligence.
At the end of January, two senior US congressmen sent a letter to the White House, urging it to consider additional export controls on Nvidia's H20 and "similarly complex" chips based on the comprehensive review of US foreign trade issued by Trump.
In February of this year, it was reported that due to the surge in demand for DeepSeek's low-cost AI models, Chinese companies' orders for Nvidia's H20 AI chips surged. According to media reports last week, in the first three months of this year, Chinese companies including ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent Holdings have ordered at least $16 billion worth of H20 chips from Nvidia.