US President Donald Trump indicated that he may permit Nvidia to sell a modified version of its next-generation advanced GPU chip to China, reported Reuters.
This comes despite ongoing concerns in Washington regarding the potential for China to utilise US AI technology to enhance its military capabilities.
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The development is expected to pave the way for China to gain access to more sophisticated computing resources from the US.
“Jensen (Huang, Nvidia CEO) also has the new chip, the Blackwell. A somewhat enhanced-in-a-negative-way Blackwell. In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it,” Trump remarked to journalists, seemingly referring to a reduction in the chip’s computational power.
“I think he’s coming to see me again about that, but that will be an unenhanced version of the big one,” he added.
Earlier, the Trump administration announced an agreement with Nvidia and AMD, which would see the US government receive 15% of revenue from the sale of certain advanced chips in China.
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By GlobalDataThis decision has raised alarms in Washington, where lawmakers from both parties have long aimed to keep China technologically behind the US in AI advancements.
“Even with scaled-down versions of flagship Nvidia (chips), China could spend and buy enough of them to build world-leading, frontier-scale AI supercomputers,” stated Saif Khan, former director of Technology and National Security at the White House National Security Council under former President Joe Biden.
Currently, the most advanced chip Nvidia is permitted to sell to China is the H20, which is based on the older Hopper architecture.
The company revealed its latest Blackwell platform in early 2024.
In May 2025, Reuters reported that Nvidia was developing a new chip for China that would be a variant of its latest state-of-the-art AI Blackwell chips, offered at a significantly reduced price.
Nvidia has yet to confirm the existence of this chip or its specifications in comparison to its US counterparts.
However; the US version of the Blackwell chip, introduced by Nvidia in March 2025, boasts performance up to 30 times faster than its predecessor.
China’s foreign ministry had not responded to inquiries regarding Trump’s potential approval for the sale of a version of the next-generation AI chips.
