David Sacks, the US President Donald Trump’s AI and Crypto advisor, has commented on the recent export rules for Nvidia H200 chips to China, and how the country is reluctant to purchase AI hardware other than Huawei.
Sacks mentioned that the Chinese government has figured out the US plan on challenging home firms like Huawei in the AI market and rejecting the H200 purchases for home companies.
“They are rejecting our chips, apparently they don’t want them, and I think the reason for that is they want semiconductor independence,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg.
His comment follows a recent Trump administration decision to unblock Nvidia H200, one of the most popular GPUs for AI data centers, for sales to Chinese firms. However, the company will have to ship this product with a 25% export tariff.
Despite allowing the chip sales, Nvidia will have a hard time returning in one of the largest AI data center markets on the face of growing challenges – Huawei.
After Nvidia’s flagship chip ban, Huawei has become the prime choice for Chinese companies to train their models and conduct AI research. The company doesn’t have advanced technologies to build its new chipsets, but its current solutions are sufficient for large and medium enterprises. On the other hand, it’s actively improving the Ascend, its AI solutions package for customers.
Meanwhile, China is planning to empower its companies with a new incentive package worth $70 billion to support AI and chipset development. A move to become independent in the semiconductor industry and reduce reliance on companies such as Nvidia.
The recent achievements by Huawei and some small companies have raised China’s confidence in the R&D segment. Amid this new development, large companies such as Alibaba and ByteDance have already reached Nvidia for the H200 chip and are expected to make new orders. However, the Chinese government has not officially allowed the purchase of H200.
