(Reuters) -White House National economic adviser Kevin Hassett, in an apparent reference to Nvidia’s H20 AI chip shipments to China, said President Trump and his team decided to let the chips go in a bid to stop China from getting ahead in the race to make the best chips. Nvidia two weeks ago said it […]
Science
US allowed Nvidia chip shipments to China to go forward, Hassett says
Audio By Carbonatix
(Reuters) -White House National economic adviser Kevin Hassett, in an apparent reference to Nvidia’s H20 AI chip shipments to China, said President Trump and his team decided to let the chips go in a bid to stop China from getting ahead in the race to make the best chips.
Nvidia two weeks ago said it was filing applications with the U.S. government to resume sales to China of its H20 graphics processing unit, and has been assured by the U.S. it will get the licenses soon.
H20 chips are the best it can legally offer in China but lack some of the computing power of the versions for sale outside China because of previous restrictions put in place by Trump’s first administration and then President Joe Biden.
“President Trump and his team decided to let the NVIDIA chips go” to maintain America’s technological edge in AI chips, Hassett told Fox News Channel’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
“One of the risks that you have to take seriously is that if China’s not buying chips from us, then they’re innovating, making their own chips. And the one thing we don’t want is for them to jump ahead in the race for chips.”
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones and Bhargav Acharya in Toronto; Editing by Daniel Wallis)