The U.S. Commerce Department, under the Trump administration, is preparing to approve exports of Nvidia's H200 AI chips to China, according to reports from Semafor. This marks a significant policy shift from the hardline export bans implemented during the Biden administration, which aimed to slow China's artificial intelligence progress.
The approval, which now sits with President Donald Trump following his 2025 return to the White House, would allow Nvidia to re-enter the Chinese AI hardware market after being sidelined for months. The H200 chip in question is positioned as a strategic compromise: it offers more capability than the previously crippled H20 model—which China rejected on performance grounds—but remains roughly 18 months behind Nvidia's latest cutting-edge designs like the Blackwell or H100 parts.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has publicly stated the final decision rests with President Trump. The administration's revised strategy aims to find a middle ground between completely blocking advanced chips and ceding the entire Chinese market to domestic rivals like Huawei. Officials reportedly believe the previous total bans backfired, inadvertently accelerating China's domestic innovation in AI hardware and software while handing market share to competitors.
For Nvidia, regaining access to China—historically accounting for up to 25% of its data center sales—could unlock billions in pent-up revenue. The move is also designed to lure Chinese firms back into Nvidia's proprietary CUDA software ecosystem, reinforcing long-term technological dependency on U.S. standards.
The policy rethink comes amid evidence that Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba, Huawei, and DeepSeek, have successfully developed competitive AI models and hardware despite U.S. restrictions. This development follows a recent blockbuster fundraising round by Chinese tech firm Moore Threads, which raised roughly ¥8 billion ($1.1 billion).
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