On August 12, Bloomberg reported that U.S. President Trump said on Monday that he was willing to consider allowing Nvidia to sell downgraded versions of its most advanced AI chips to China. Trump said,If Nvidia could design its Blackwell chips to be less advanced, he would consider a deal that would allow the company to export Blackwell chips to China.
Trump
"It is possible that I would reach an agreement to make some negative improvements to the Blackwell processor. In other words, reduce its performance by 30 to 50 percent," he said at a press conference.
Trump made the announcement on Blackwell chip exports while confirming another unusual agreement between the U.S. government and Nvidia. According to this agreement,If Nvidia sells H20 AI chips to China, the company will need to hand over 15% of the revenue from these chips to the U.S. government.According to an informed source,AMD will also hand over 15% of its MI308 chip revenue from China to the US government.
Trump did not specify when he would begin talks with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about Blackwell chips, but he hinted that a meeting on the matter could be held soon.
"I think he will come to me again to talk about it, but it will be an unenhanced version of that big chip," Trump said.
Nvidia's Blackwell architecture chips are at the heart of the most powerful computers currently used to create and run AI software.These chips are currently too powerful to be exported to China under U.S. export restrictions.
As of press time, Nvidia declined to comment on Trump’s remarks.