Jensen Huang is in Taiwan for TSMC's sports day event right now. Before attending, he spoke to local media, giving insight on various ongoing developments surrounding Nvidia and its relationship with AI constituents — including the prospect of selling Blackwell chips to China. President Trump and U.S. Treasury Secretary have already made it clear that Blackwell is reserved for America first, and Huang has just echoed those sentiments by clarifying that "there are no active discussions" surrounding this matter.
4/5 Jensen on Nvidia China sales: “There are no active discussions. Currently, we’re not planning to ship anything to China. It’s up to China, when they would like Nvidia products to go back to serve the Chinese market.”November 7, 2025
A few days ago, while speaking to CBS, Trump said the most advanced AI GPUs will not be sold to China. Following that, America's finance chief Scott Bessent hinted at a potential strategy, highlighting that China can have Blackwell chips after they're outdated by a year or two. Jensen's latest comments don't reveal anything new, but they corroborate the existing stance permeating Washington.
That said, beyond the White House, Huang reminds us that it's ultimately up to China's discretion whether it wants to deal with Nvidia. Beijing has recently banned its firms from dealing with the chipmaker to focus on local, homegrown silicon as the region grows toward AI independence. Blackwell still makes its way into the country, however, through illicit channels.
The previous-gen, Hopper-based H20 is the top-end AI GPU Nvidia sells in China, and there are reports of a Blackwell-based B30A model launching soon. If that comes to fruition and China allows Nvidia to sell it, the chipmaker will have to share 15% of the revenue from all sales with the White House, and that's after export licenses have been granted.
(Image credit: Nvidia)
A dense layer of red tape covers this AI race, which is informing semiconductor trade policy at the moment. Meanwhile, Huang has even claimed that China is aggressively tailing the U.S. in artificial intelligence — if not already ahead — and that most of the popular open-source models in the world today are from China. The region also produces some 50% of all AI researchers globally, implying the competition is stiff.
Even though neither Washington nor Beijing wants to engage with each other on cutting-edge AI silicon, both heads of state struck a historic trade truce last month that's said to last a year. This positive development briefly led the markets to think that a chip breakthrough might be on the cards, though it's now clear the two nations don't even want to talk about it.
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