US officials are having early discussions on whether to let Nvidia Corp. sell its H200 artificial intelligence chips to China, according to people familiar with the matter, a contentious potential move that would mark a major win for the world’s most valuable company.
President Donald Trump’s team has held internal talks about H200 chip shipments to the Asian country in recent days, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a highly sensitive matter. No final decision has been made, the people emphasized, and it’s entirely possible that the idea remains an internal debate and never results in actual license approvals, which are required under export controls that Washington first imposed in 2022.
Still, the fact that H200 shipments are being considered is a major departure from the Trump administration’s earlier public stances on semiconductor export controls. It also would represent a concession to Beijing that would almost certainly draw widespread opposition from China hawks in Washington.
Nvidia shares climbed to a session high on the news Friday. They gained as much as 2% to $184.29 following earlier declines.
In a statement, Nvidia said the current regulatory landscape doesn’t allow it to offer a competitive data center product in China, “leaving that massive market to our rapidly growing foreign competitors.”
“Our foreclosure from the China data center compute market has no impact on our ability to supply customers in the USA,” the Santa Clara, California-based company said.
Representatives from the White House and the Commerce Department, which regulates exports, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang has lobbied the Trump administration intensively for a reprieve from restrictions that the chipmaker says have forced it out of the world’s largest market for semiconductors. If realized, the H200 move would constitute a significant easing of US trade restrictions designed to curtail China’s prowess in artificial intelligence.
It also could fulfill a key ask from Beijing, which has repeatedly protested Washington’s curbs on both advanced chips and the tools used to make them.
At the same time, though, the Chinese government wants the country to transition to homegrown AI hardware from companies like Huawei Technologies Co. And it has discouraged or outright forbidden firms from using less-advanced products Nvidia designed specifically for customers in the Asian country — the only AI chips Washington currently allows the chipmaker to sell there.
Trump had previously floated the possibility of discussing exports of Nvidia’s most advanced chips with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The topic ultimately didn’t come up during recent talks, but his administration didn’t take exports of currently restricted AI chips completely off the table.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later said he could imagine exporting the current Blackwell generation of chips to China once they are no longer the most advanced — possibly in a year or two.
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