NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang pays 150 million yen to dine with President Trump, after which export restrictions on 'H20' chips are lifted
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Shortly after NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump's private residence, it was reported that a proposed ban on exports of NVIDIA's AI chip 'H20' to China had been shelved.
Trump administration backs off Nvidia's 'H20' chip crackdown : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/nx-s1-5356480/nvidia-china-ai-h20-chips-trump
Trump reportedly walking back AI chip export curbs to China • The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/09/nvidia_us_export_ban_change/
NVIDIA's H20 is a China-only AI chip designed with reduced performance to avoid violating export controls, making it the most advanced AI chip a U.S. company can legally sell to China, a key market for NVIDIA.
The H20 has been extremely popular in China, with predictions that one million units will be sold in 2024 alone. Because of this, there has been a growing view that the H20 may also be subject to regulation.
NVIDIA plans to sell 1 million H20 chips in China in 2024 and earn 2 trillion yen in sales, selling twice as many AI chips as Huawei to show its presence - GIGAZINE
Furthermore, in January 2025, a Chinese AI company released the large-scale language model ' DeepSeek R1 ,' demonstrating that it was possible to develop AI comparable to the most advanced models in the United States using less powerful AI chips, which caused demand for H20 to explode. As America's dominance in the AI field was undermined, it was reported that the Trump administration had accelerated discussions on regulating H20 in earnest.
In the midst of this, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang attended a dinner held at President Trump's residence in early April. Some reports say that the cost of attending this dinner was $1 million (approximately 146.8 million yen) per person.
Then, on April 9, 2025, the American public broadcaster NPR reported that after the dinner, the US government decided to change its policy on H20 chips and put plans for additional regulation on hold.
The U.S. government has been preparing export controls targeting H20 for several months, with them scheduled to be implemented as early as the second week of April 2025, according to two sources familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly.
One of the sources also said, 'The change in policy comes after Nvidia promised the Trump administration new investments in AI data centers to be located in the United States.'
by Hillel Steinberg
Experts warn that the Trump administration's decision to allow Nvidia to continue exporting the H20 to China will greatly benefit China. Chris Miller, a political scientist at Tufts University and a semiconductor expert, told NPR, 'Chips like the H20 are legal to sell to China because they're specially modified to reduce performance, but they're better than most Chinese chips. China can't yet produce the amount of semiconductors it needs domestically, so it relies on exports of Nvidia chips.'
Rep. Raja Krishnamurti, ranking member of the House of Representatives China Committee, also expressed his disappointment in a statement to NPR, saying, 'While the export controls have worked, America cannot afford to waste time. Every day we cannot control the export of chips designed to circumvent our controls is another day our adversaries can build up their stockpiles to use against us.'
Multiple media outlets have requested comment from the White House and NVIDIA, but as of the time of writing, both have declined to respond.
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in Hardware, Posted by log1l_ks