By Trevor Hunnicutt and Eduardo Baptista
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE/GYEONGJU (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump may have teased that he could discuss Nvidia’s state-of-the-art artificial intelligence Blackwell chips with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but in the end, he said the topic didn’t come up.
After meeting with Xi in South Korea on Thursday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that semiconductors had been discussed and that China is “going to be talking to Nvidia and others about taking chips,” but added: “We’re not talking about the Blackwell.”
A day earlier, Trump had praised the Blackwell chip as “super-duper”, adding he might speak to Xi about that – comments that likely helped Nvidia make history as the first company to reach a $5 trillion valuation.
THORNY TOPIC
The extent to which China has access to Nvidia’s chips has been a key point of friction between the U.S. and China.
Washington currently imposes export controls on sales of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China, seeking to limit its tech progress, particularly in any applications that could help its military.
Nvidia has been working on a new chip for China based on its latest Blackwell architecture that will be more powerful than the H20 model it is currently allowed to sell there, sources have previously said.
But while private Chinese companies are believed to be very much interested in purchasing such a chip, the Chinese government has turned cool towards Nvidia and is instead promoting domestic chip manufacturers like Huawei.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said earlier this week that his company had not applied for U.S. export licenses to send its newest chips to China because of the Chinese position.
“They’ve made it very clear that they don’t want Nvidia to be there right now,” he said during the company’s developers’ event, adding it needs access to the China market to fund U.S.-based research and development.
A range of U.S. lawmakers, both Democratic and Republican, have also expressed their opposition to giving China more access to advanced chips like Nvidia’s Blackwell.
On Thursday at least, Trump did not appear to want to get into the thick of the issue.
“I said (to Xi) that’s really between you and Nvidia, but we’re sort of the arbitrator or the referee,” he said.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Eduardo Baptista; Writing by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Comments