The U.S. Trump administration has made it clear it will block exports to China of Blackwell, the cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor made by Nvidia. It is a step that reaffirms a strong resolve to cut off the source of China's AI technology development. The White House drew a line by saying it has no interest in selling "at this time," but did not rule out the possibility of additional measures depending on the trajectory of U.S.-China relations.
According to Reuters, on the 4th, Karoline Leavitt, White House Spokesperson, said at a regular briefing, "As for the most advanced chip, the Blackwell chip, we have no interest in selling to China at this time."
This is an official reaffirmation of comments President Donald Trump made on the 2nd. At the time, President Trump said, "The cutting-edge chip made by the most valuable corporations in the world (Nvidia) will be stockpiled for U.S. corporations," and declared, "It will be cut off from China and other countries."
Blackwell, now banned from export, is a next-generation AI chip platform unveiled by Nvidia in March 2024. It is called an "AI superchip," essential for training and inference of large language models (LLMs). AI developers around the world are going all out to secure this chip.
According to major foreign media including CNBC in the United States, the Blackwell B200 GPU delivers up to 30 times faster inference performance than the previous-generation H100. It can dramatically reduce the energy and expense required for AI model training. The U.S. government blocked this chip from going to China because it is extremely concerned that China would use it to advance military AI or surveillance systems.
This is not the first time the United States has imposed semiconductor export controls targeting China. In Oct. 2022, under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced comprehensive export control measures to block China's access to advanced semiconductors. With this measure, exports to China of Nvidia's flagship AI chips, the A100 and H100, were blocked.
To get around the restrictions, Nvidia developed and sold "China-customized" chips, the A800 and H800, with reduced performance. The Chinese market is a key market that accounts for 20-25% of Nvidia's data center revenue.
However, in Oct. 2023, the U.S. government introduced additional measures that included low-spec chips such as the A800 and H800 in the scope of export controls, closing even this workaround. The latest Blackwell ban shows the Trump administration's hard-line stance to completely break China's drive to catch up in AI.
In the market, there had been speculation that the Trump administration might allow sales to China of a scaled-down version of Blackwell. But with this White House announcement, the path for exporting "low-spec Blackwell" to China is blocked for now. According to Reuters the previous day, President Trump hinted he would discuss the issue at a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping held in Korea last month, but the topic reportedly did not make it to the table.
The move is expected to inevitably hit Nvidia as well as Chinese AI corporations. Nvidia is effectively being pushed to the brink of having to give up China, a core market. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang previously warned that "U.S. restrictions targeting China could cause 'enormous damage' to U.S. technology corporations."
Chinese corporations have little choice but to speed up development of domestic AI chips to replace Nvidia's. Huawei's Ascend 910B is being discussed as an alternative, but the prevailing view is that it still falls short of Nvidia's chip performance.