USA erwägen Chip-Export-Limit für China

Another month, another proposed change to US AI chip export policy. This time, the US government seems to be in talks to control Nvidia's H200 chip.

According to Bloomberg, and citing people familiar with the matter, the Trump administration is reportedly considering limiting Nvidia chip exports to 75,000 per Chinese firm. Notably, AMD's MI325 AI chips are also included in this deal, so Chinese customers will have to choose how many of each they can take. This 75,000 is reportedly half of what Alibaba and ByteDance previously told Nvidia they would like to purchase.

The tension here comes from the money the US will earn from taxes on those chips, plus its desire to keep the US as a dominant supplier, versus how much it could be aiding China's AI development. The US, naturally, wants as much money as it can, whilst also staying on top when it comes to the future of AI.

Bloomberg says shipments to China could reach as many as a million units total, though it's said that huge Chinese firms will likely apply for chips under multiple customers. This means most of the chips could still end up in the hands of just a few firms.

For a quick history of why this turn is a bit strange (and yet expected by now), in July last year, the US government approved the sale of AI GPUs to China, once again after blocking such practice. Then, despite Nvidia claiming its H20 AI, a bespoke AI chip model made specifically for China, does 'not have backdoors', security concerns from China halted sales. In August, Nvidia stopped making H20 chips due to this concern, and Jensen Huang said, "At the moment we are 100% out of China" in October.

By November, China was in talks to ban foreign-made chips from state-funded data centers, but the Chinese government still approved the sale of Nvidia AI GPUs to DeepSeek at the end of January this year. Trump himself approved the sale of H200 AI chips to China in December. This is all to say, despite both nations distancing themselves from each other, there are still tentative plans to cooperate.

Nvidia is currently the most valuable company in the world, and that is mostly due to its AI efforts in the last few years. Just last week, it reported $193.7 billion in annual data center revenue in its earnings call, so it will want to get as many AI chips out there and in customers' hands as possible.

But it's worth noting that the US has not been majorly consistent on its export policies, tariffs, or really anything as of late. And it's unlikely the back and forth stops here.