SAN JOSE, Calif. — Nvidia is back in business in China. Congress will be watching closely.
In an interview Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told us the AI giant’s H200 chips will make their way into the Chinese market as early as a few “weeks.” It could take a little longer as the company has to restart its whole supply chain after both Washington and Beijing created roadblocks to selling the chips to China.
While Nvidia hasn’t heard directly from the Chinese government, businesses in China have been making purchase orders, signaling they’re authorized to receive the chips, Huang said. The U.S. government has also issued export licenses authorizing the sales, he added.
“There’s no other process that’s necessary,” Huang said.
The chips are manufactured in Taiwan. They’ll then be shipped to the United States to be checked before being sent to customers in China. Nvidia will provide the U.S. government the 25% “cut” Huang negotiated with President Donald Trump.
Blackwells. China hawks in Congress sounded the alarm earlier about the Trump administration allowing Nvidia to sell H200s to China, and they’d hoped the licensing process would slow down the sales. These hawks likely won’t be pleased about the H200 orders soon heading to China, and they’ll be even more upset about what Huang wants to do next.
Huang said that “early next year,” he’ll make the push for the U.S. government to allow Nvidia to sell its Blackwell chips to China. The Blackwell chip architecture is more advanced than the H200. Trump so far hasn’t allowed Nvidia to send those chips to China.
Huang said he’ll ask for the green light to remain competitive in China as Huawei ramps up development of its own AI chips. Huang noted that he’d make the request after Nvidia’s most advanced chips — Vera Rubin — are rolled out in the United States in the second half of the year.
“When all of the American companies have ramped up in Vera Rubin, we should start to think about making sure that Blackwell is able to go compete in the market,” Haung said.
Huang argued it’s critical that the United States remains competitive in China, the second largest AI market in the world, in order to solidify its global dominance of the AI stack. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick shared the view that U.S. tech should be diffused around the world during a closed-door appearance in San Jose this week, Huang said.
No Groqs in China. Huang also said that Nvidia isn’t planning on sending a version of its Groq chips to China.
Nvidia announced at its GTC conference this week that it’d incorporate chips from the Groq startup — not to be confused with xAI’s Grok model — with Nvidia’s Rubin platform to accelerate performance.
But those chips aren’t going to China, Huang said, contradicting reporting from Reuters.
The report is “totally false,” Huang said.
