Nvidia to resume H20 chip sales in China amid easing U.S. export curbs

While top American leaders and tech executives gathered in Pittsburgh last week for a headline-grabbing $90 billion AI investment summit, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was thousands of miles away, securing Nvidia’s position in China.

On his third visit to Beijing this year, Huang confirmed that Nvidia will resume selling its H20 AI chips to Chinese customers, following an easing of U.S. export restrictions that had previously blocked access to the high-performance processors.

The move marks a significant shift in Washington’s export control strategy, as policymakers reconsider how blanket restrictions might unintentionally accelerate China’s domestic chip innovation and hand competitors like Huawei an open runway.

“There’s a compelling argument here that you don’t want to just hand Huawei the entire Chinese market,” said David Sacks, White House AI and crypto czar. “Nvidia can still compete with a downgraded chip.”

The balancing act of U.S. policy

Sacks, speaking to Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow, acknowledged growing concerns that overly restrictive chip bans could backfire by hurting U.S. companies' global competitiveness without effectively slowing China’s tech ambitions.

“China is maybe 1.5 to 2 years behind us in chip design,” Sacks noted. “But Huawei is moving fast, and even before they catch up, they’ll likely begin exporting their chips globally.”

Nvidia’s H20 chips, while less advanced than its top-tier AI hardware, still offer robust capabilities for AI training and inference, and represent a critical foothold in the massive Chinese market, which remains the second-largest buyer of advanced chips globally.

Looking ahead

The U.S. government now sees chip exports as a lever in broader negotiations with China, particularly over access to rare earth elements critical to everything from smartphones to military tech.

For Nvidia, the resumed sales offer both revenue upside and a chance to retain brand and market presence in a region where domestic alternatives are gaining steam fast.