Nvidia says US will let it resume H20 chip sales to China

Nvidia announced that the US government had assured the company it would grant the export licences needed to resume selling its H20 AI chip to China, reversing restrictions the Commerce Department had imposed in April 2025. The H20 was itself a product of an earlier round of controls: Nvidia had designed it specifically to stay within the performance limits Washington set in 2023 while still being sellable in the Chinese market, so its subsequent restriction and now its reinstatement represented two swings within a single export-control regime rather than a change in the underlying rules.

The reversal followed what CEO Jensen Huang described as sustained lobbying, including a meeting with President Trump the week before the announcement. Huang argued publicly that Chinese developers would otherwise buy comparable chips from domestic suppliers or route around restrictions entirely, making the Chinese market “crucial for US companies” to retain rather than cede. Alongside the H20 news, Huang announced a new RTX PRO GPU designed to comply fully with export rules for the Chinese market, and he appeared on Chinese state broadcaster CCTV shortly after the announcement to say Nvidia had secured approval to begin shipping.

The announcement addressed only Nvidia’s expectation of getting licences, not licences already issued; actual license approvals and shipments followed over the subsequent weeks. The episode illustrated how quickly US chip-export policy toward China had become a matter of direct negotiation between individual companies and the White House, with restrictions imposed and lifted within the same few months as competing pressures — restricting a strategic rival’s AI capability versus preserving US chipmakers’ revenue and market share — pulled policy in opposite directions.