The Trump administration has banned NVIDIA from selling its H20 chip to China, escalating a technology dispute between the United States and China. The decision will cost the company billions of dollars and jeopardize a line of chips designed specifically to comply with previous U.S. restrictions, Bloomberg reports.
The US government has told NVIDIA that the H20 now requires an export license to be shipped to China indefinitely, citing concerns that the chip could be used in Chinese supercomputers.
NVIDIA shares fell 6% after the announcement, leading other chipmakers in the U.S. and Asia to fall, including AMD. NVIDIA warned that it expects to take about $5.5 billion in write-downs this quarter due to inventory and contract obligations. Although the H20 is a less powerful version of the chip, it was still restricted to prevent it from being used in Chinese AI development.
Experts say this is not just part of a trade war, but also a long-term policy to contain China's technological growth. The emergence of Chinese competitors such as DeepSeek and Huawei is causing concern in Washington. Although Chinese AI accelerators are still inferior in performance, their development is intensifying strategic competition.
Thus, the H20 ban underscores the US intention to restrict China's access to advanced technologies, particularly in the fields of artificial intelligence and supercomputers, even by tightly regulating companies that try to operate within the framework of previous rules.