The U.S. government has informed federal agencies that it will not permit Nvidia (NVDA) to sell its latest scaled-down AI chip to China, The Information reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The company provided samples of the B30A chip, which was developed for China, to several of its Chinese customers.
But Nvidia (NVDA) is working on modifying the chip’s design, hoping that the U.S. government will reconsider its stance, two employees told The Information.
The B30A chip is based on Nvidia’s (NVDA) Blackwell architecture and is said to be more powerful than the H20 model, Reuters reported in August.
According to an Nvidia (NVDA) spokesperson, the company has “zero share in China’s highly competitive market for data center compute” and does not include it in its guidance. That compares to a 95% share back in 2022.
China has been discouraging local companies from buying Nvidia (NVDA) chips, and is instead promoting domestic AI chipmakers like Huawei. Beijing recently issued guidance requiring new data center projects that received state funds to only use Chinese-made AI chips.
Meanwhile, Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang said there were “no active discussions” on selling its advanced Blackwell chips to China.
“Currently, we are not planning to ship anything to China,” he said on a live broadcast by Taiwan’s Formosa TV News. “It’s up to China when they would like Nvidia products to go back to serve the Chinese market, I look forward to them changing their policy.”