Nvidia CEO says China likely won't accept its US-made H200 chips now

Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, said on Wednesday that China probably won’t accept the company’s H200 AI chips, even if the U.S. government decides to loosen restrictions on chip exports.

Speaking with reporters after meeting President Donald Trump at the White House, Jensen said he had no idea whether Chinese regulators would approve the purchase of the chips, adding, “We don’t know. We have no clue.” He made it clear that if the chips are watered down, China simply won’t buy them. “We can’t degrade chips that we sell to China,” Jensen said. “They won’t accept that.”

This came after discussions within Trump’s administration on whether to allow the H200, which started shipping last year, to be sold in China. The chip is powerful enough to train and run large-scale AI models, making it one of the most sensitive pieces of technology in the U.S. hardware arsenal.

Trump meets Jensen Huang as Nvidia fights off tighter export rules

Trump didn’t give any direct answers when asked about export control changes during an Oval Office event later that day. But he did throw in a quick compliment at Jensen, calling him someone doing “an amazing job.”

Jensen also headed to a closed-door Senate Banking Committee meeting, where export controls were once again the topic. That committee oversees trade rules tied to national security, including high-tech exports like Nvidia’s chips.

As Jensen walked into the meeting, he made it clear the company’s hands are tied.If the chips are downgraded to meet U.S. limits, they’re useless to buyers in China.

On the way out, Republican Senator Mike Rounds said that Jensen expressed Nvidia’s need to sell globally. “They want the customers around the world,” Rounds told reporters. “We understand that. And at the same time, we’re all concerned, including Jensen, with regard to having restrictions on what goes to China.”

At that same session, Senator Cynthia Lummis, also a Republican, said the controversial GAIN AI Act didn’t come up.The proposed law would’ve required Nvidia and other U.S. chipmakers like AMD to serve domestic customers first before selling chips to China or other countries under arms embargoes.

The bill didn’t make it into the final defense package, which handed Nvidia a small win as it continues to lobby against new limits.

H200 chip faces political, economic, and diplomatic roadblocks

Later in the evening, during a talk hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Jensen said that discussions are still happening inside the administration. Final approval on chip sales will come down to Trump, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has confirmed that the decision is now with the president.

Any change would undo parts of the 2022 policy that locked China out of the most advanced U.S. tech. Those restrictions were designed to stop China’s military from getting ahead in AI.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, who leads the Democratic side of the banking panel, slammed the idea of allowing the H200 into Chinese hands. In a letter to Lutnick signed with Andy Kim, she warned the administration that sales of the chip would “turbocharge China’s military and undercut American technological leadership.”

She also criticized the decision-making process as lacking transparency, writing, “We should not allow Big Tech firms like Nvidia to sell sensitive technology to governments that do not share our values.”

Despite this, Jensen is still eyeing the Chinese market. In an interview with Bloomberg Television last month, he said China represents a $50 billion opportunity. But for now, Nvidia has excluded data center revenue from China in its financial forecasts.

Still, Jensen insisted that reopening that market would help everyone, saying Chinese open-source AI models “leave China and are used all over the world.”

Nvidia’s last attempt to make something work in China didn’t go well. The company had won approval to sell its H20 chip, designed to sit just under the U.S. export limits.But China told local firms not to bother and to use homegrown chips instead.

Jensen later pushed for a weaker version of the upcoming Blackwell chip, but that went nowhere, even after an October meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“A GPU for AI data centers, that GPU weighs two tons,” said Jensen. “It has one and a half million parts. It consumes 200,000 watts. It costs $3 million. Every so often somebody says, you know, these GPUs are being smuggled. I really would love to see it—not to mention you have to smuggle enough of them to fill a football field.”

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