Bruno Coelho – Stock.adobe.com
Export controls by the US government have been implemented, limiting Nvidia’s ability to sell their H20 chip in China.
Nvidia expects a big hit on its business, as reports surface that the White House has imposed export restrictions on its GPU (graphics processing unit) in China. The new restrictions seem to be a carryover from the previous administration’s policy of restricting access to AI chips, and advanced AI models.
Ned Finkle was vice-president of government affairs at Nvidia and posted a damning critique of the former US Administration’s efforts to curb semiconductor exports. In a blog he stated: “In its final days in office, Biden’s Administration seeks undermine America’s leading position with a 200+-page regulatory morass drafted in secret without proper legislative oversight.” This would be a massive overreach that would impose bureaucratic controls on how America’s leading computers, semiconductors, systems, and even software were designed and marketed worldwide.
Finkle described Biden’s approach as an attempt to “rig market outcomes and stifle the competition”adding that “the Biden Administration’s new rule threatens squander America’s hard-won technical advantage” and said they “would not enhance US security”.
It appears that the Trump Administration is not rescinding the restrictions put in place by the Biden administration. The new rules are set to take effect on April 15. According to a story on BBC (), Nvidia now says that the Trump administration informed it that a license will be required for exporting the H20 chip into China.
The transcript of the company’s Q4 2025 results call. Colette Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, noted in a post on Motley foolthat datacentre sales to China as a proportion of total revenue remained below levels at the time of export controls. “In the absence of any changes in regulations, we think that China shipments are likely to remain at their current percentage. She said that the market for datacentres in China is very competitive.
Although the company stated that it would continue to adhere to export controls while providing its customers with services, its share price suffered as a result.
H20 is an Nvidia AI Accelerator that is less powerful, and designed for the Chinese Market. According to Antonia Hmaidi is a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute of China Studiesand she estimates that Nvidia will sell a million H20s in 2024 to Chinese customers. While the Financial Times reportedthat Huawei has been ramping production of its AI chip, the Ascend, and Hmaidi pointed out that only 200,000 units will be shipped in 2024. This “reveals structural problems in China’s semiconductor industries”. Hmaidi noted that Huawei’s AI software lags Nvidia’s and that developers in China are reluctant to use the chip for most models. The export changes for the H20 are just a few days after the Trump Administration announced that Nvidia is leading what they called an “American-made chip boom”.
Nvidia announced that it plans to produce AI infrastructure worth up to half a billion dollars in the US within the next four-years through partnerships with TSMC. Foxconn. Wistron. Amkor. and SPIL.
According to the company, it has begun production of its Blackwell chip at TSMC’s Phoenix chip plants. It is also building supercomputer factories in Texas with Foxconn and Wistron, in Houston and Dallas. According to Nvidia the production at both plants will ramp up within 12 to 15 months.
