Shares of Nvidia (NVDA) rose on Monday following a report that the Trump administration is preparing to greenlight the sale of the company’s more powerful H200 chips to China.
Trump previously lifted restrictions on the sale of Nvidia’s China-specific H20 AI chips, which have less processing capacity than the H200, to the country, but China halted imports of the reduced units.
The stock climbed 1.7% on the news.
According to Semafor, Trump will direct the Department of Commerce to allow the sale of H200 chips as a means of appeasing both China, with which the US is trying to secure a trade deal, and security hawks who say that providing such chips will allow Chinese companies and the country’s military to develop more powerful AI models.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, along with other proponents of shipping chips to China, has said that selling high-powered chips to China will give the US an advantage in the AI race by ensuring that Chinese developers are dependent on technologies built by a US company.
Without Nvidia’s chips, China’s own tech companies have stepped in to develop their own AI processors and software.
Huang has said it’s imperative for the US to have a hand in the Chinese AI market, which is home to roughly half of the world’s AI programmers.
Read more about Nvidia’s stock moves and today’s market action.
The Biden administration initially banned the sale of AI chips to China, but Trump lifted the ban on the degraded chips. He has also proposed that the US government would take a 15% cut from the sale of chips into the country.
The H200 chip is a generation behind Nvidia’s current cutting-edge Blackwell line of AI processors, which include the B200 and B300. The company plans to launch its Rubin AI chips in 2026.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) issued a statement following the report criticizing the move and claiming that Huang’s donation to help fund the construction of the White House’s new East Wing helped the company secure the sale of the chips.
“This risks turbocharging China’s bid for technological and military dominance and undermining U.S. economic and national security,” Warren added. “Congress must act swiftly. It should pass bipartisan legislation that reins in this Administration, and it should require Mr. Huang to testify publicly and under oath.”
Multiple tech companies have donated to the East Wing project, including Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT).
Nvidia stopped counting China revenue in its quarterly earnings reports and no longer uses it as part of its forward-looking guidance calculations.
