The Trump administration has reversed its stance on NVIDIA's H20 chip after a Mar-a-Lago dinner attended by the company's CEO Jensen Huang, which cost $1 million per person, NPR reports.
Initially, the plan was to impose export restrictions on the H20 chip, the most advanced artificial intelligence chip the US can legally sell to China. However, after the dinner, the White House decided to suspend the restrictions, abandoning their implementation.
The government's shift in stance follows NVIDIA's pledge to invest in new AI data centers in the U.S. Lawmakers have been pressuring the Trump administration to tighten restrictions on advanced AI technologies, particularly after Chinese company DeepSeek demonstrated its AI in January.
The H20 chip has become popular in China because it supports inference processes for AI models such as DeepSeek, Meta, and OpenAI. Chinese companies have been actively purchasing H20, stockpiling them in case export restrictions are imposed.
Despite political pressure to expand restrictions, the process has been delayed by insufficient staffing at the Bureau of Industrial Security, which develops and implements export controls.
Trump's decision to allow Chinese companies to continue purchasing H20 chips was a major victory for China, as these chips outperform most domestic Chinese technology.