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Donald Trump said he is considering allowing Nvidia to sell a more advanced chip in China after confirming that he “negotiated a little deal” in which the US will take a 15 per cent fee of the chipmaker’s artificial intelligence processor sales to the country.
The deal Trump struck with Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang, revealed by the FT on Sunday, covered sales of its H20 chip, which it introduced in 2023 to comply with Biden-era controls on AI chips.
The performance of the H20 chips sold to China is restricted compared with those available to US customers.
The H20 is based on Nvidia’s older Hopper architecture but Trump on Monday said that he planned to discuss a new deal with Huang to allow it to sell chips to China based on its latest Blackwell platform.
The president said these chips would be “enhanced in a negative way”, comparing the potential sales to the way the US sells downgraded versions of its most advanced fighter jets.
“It’s possible I’d make a deal,” the president said during a press conference. He described the H20 as “an old chip that China already has”.
“On the Blackwell, I think he [Huang] is coming to see me again about that,” he added.
The Trump administration’s unprecedented deal with Nvidia and rival AMD to pay a share of their Chinese revenues to the US government has triggered shockwaves from Washington to Beijing as the president continues to upend long-standing corporate norms.
There is currently no version of Nvidia’s Blackwell chip available in China under US export controls.
This is a developing story
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