Nvidia confirms China’s next AI chip won’t come from Hopper line

Nvidia has made it official: there won’t be another Hopper chip for China. Speaking during a livestream published by Taiwan’s Formosa TV News, CEO Jensen Huang said the Hopper H20 architecture cannot be modified any further to meet US government export rules.

“It’s not Hopper because it’s not possible to modify Hopper anymore,” Jensen said on Saturday, addressing the question about what chip could replace H20 in the Chinese market.

The company is now figuring out what to offer instead, after Washington blocked additional shipments of H20, the only AI chip from Nvidia still allowed to be sold in China under current rules.

That chip was already a stripped-down version of earlier designs, made specifically to stay under the export thresholds. With no more room to adjust Hopper, Nvidia will have to come up with a completely different product if it wants to keep selling legally in China.

Nvidia looks to survive in China as AI rules tighten

Jensen traveled to China shortly after the restrictions were announced, underlining just how much the market still matters to the company. China brought in $17 billion for Nvidia in the fiscal year ending January 26, which made up 13% of the company’s total revenue. But holding onto that number is getting harder.

As reported by Reuters, the company is planning to launch a new downgraded chip sometime in the next two months. The unnamed chip won’t belong to the Hopper family, Jensen said. That confirms what many had suspected: the design limits of Hopper have been fully reached, and Nvidia has no more legal wiggle room with that line.

The current regulations come from the Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, a policy introduced in January by the Biden administration, just a week before President Donald Trump returned to the White House. 

The rules blocked advanced AI chips from being exported to several countries, including China. Speaking about those controls, Jensen said they were a mistake. “Export controls should be designed to maximize the proliferation of US technology,” he said, criticizing the Biden-era framework.

Trump has said that he plans to cancel the AI diffusion policy completely, calling it bad for business and innovation. But for now, the restrictions remain in place, and Nvidia is stuck trying to keep a foothold in China without breaking the law.

At the same time, local players like Huawei are gaining ground in the AI chip market, taking advantage of Nvidia’s regulatory setbacks. The company isn’t exiting China, but it’s now forced to rely on low-performance alternatives until a new architecture is ready.

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