US to allow Nvidia to ship H200 chips to China, Trump says

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Dec 8 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that he will allow Nvidia to ship its H200 chips to approved customers in China and other countries, under conditions that he said would allow for continued strong national security.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is finalizing the details, and the same approach will apply to AMD, Intel, and other U.S. companies, Trump said in a post on X.

Trump said in the post that he informed Chinese President Xi Jinping of his decision, and that Xi “responded positively.”

“$25% will be paid to the United States of America,” Trump said. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about what Trump had intended.

The H200 chip, unveiled two years ago, has more high-bandwidth memory than its predecessor, the H100, allowing it to process data more quickly.

According to a report released on Sunday by the non-partisan think tank the Institute for Progress, the H200 would be almost six times as powerful as the H20, the most advanced AI semiconductor that can legally be exported to China, after the Trump administration reversed its short-lived ban on such sales this year.

Export of the chip would allow Chinese AI labs to build AI supercomputers that achieve performance similar to top U.S. AI supercomputers, albeit at higher costs, the report also said.

Trump said Nvidia’s latest Blackwell chips would not be allowed to be exported to China.

“Nvidia’s U.S. Customers are already moving forward with their incredible, highly advanced Blackwell chips, and soon, Rubin, neither of which are part of this deal,” he said.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Ryan Patrick Jones; additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; editing by Costas Pitas)