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Trump suggests Nvidia sell scaled-down GPU chip to China, a carefully planned 'wanting it all' approach: analysts

Global Times

By GT staff reporters Published: Aug 12, 2025 12:16 PM

US President Donald Trump on Monday suggested he might allow Nvidia to sell a scaled-down version of its next-generation advanced GPU chip in China, with a 30 percent to 50 percent reduction in performance, US media reported on Monday local time. Chinese analysts said that this could be another H20 chip - a downgraded version specific for the Chinese market - to meet export control requirements, although the training capacity for artificial intelligence (AI) large models would be over five times that of the H20.

Analysts also stressed that this reflects the US' complex and contradictory mindset - a carefully planned "wanting it all" approach. The US does not want to lose access to the Chinese market, but at the same time it is afraid of being overtaken by China in AI.

"The downgraded chips showcased the attempt to preserve US companies' market share in China, maintaining revenue despite reduced performance, while precisely setting export control limits that ensure the chips fall short of the thresholds needed for cutting-edge research applications or military," Zhang Xiaorong, director of the Beijing-based Cutting-Edge Technology Research Institute, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"Jensen (Huang, CEO of Nvidia) also has the new chip, the Blackwell. A somewhat enhanced-in-a-negative-way Blackwell. In other words, take 30 percent to 50 percent off of it," Trump told reporters, according to Reuters.

"I think he's coming to see me again about that, but that will be an unenhanced version of the big one," Trump added. Nvidia's Huang visited Trump in the White House on Friday, US media reported.

The new chip "somewhat enhanced-in-a-negative-way Blackwell" that Trump referred to is B30, Chen Jing, a vice president of the Technology and Strategy Research Institute, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Chen said that Nvidia intended to sell Blackwell chips to China, but the US imposed stricter performance limits for exports. As a result, Nvidia developed a downgraded version, which was known as B30 or "Blackwell lite."

"Blackwell is Nvidia's latest AI chip architecture, released this year, with the B100 as its flagship model. Compared with the previous Hopper architecture's H100, Blackwell offers significant improvements in computing power and energy efficiency, with training performance approximately doubling," said Chen.

Reuters in May reported that "Nvidia was preparing a new chip for China that was a variant of its most recent state-of-the-art AI Blackwell chips at a significantly lower cost."

There is currently no version of Nvidia's Blackwell chip legally available in China under US export controls, said Financial Times in a report on Tuesday.

Trump on Monday also said that Huang plans to visit him again to negotiate export licenses for the Blackwell chips, according to CNBC.

"Compared with the H20, the B30 offers significantly higher performance. The H20, heavily restricted, provides only about 15 percent of the H100's computing power for training. If the B30 achieves 30-50 percent of the B100's performance, its training capacity for AI large models would be over five times that of the H20," said Chen.

CNBC reported on Tuesday that Trump saying Nvidia's H20 is an "old chip that China already has" and is "obsolete" and that "Huawei has a similar chip."

Trump compared the H20 chip to Nvidia's current fastest AI chip Blackwell, and said that he wouldn't allow those to be sold to China without significant downgrades, such as a 30 percent to 50 percent reduction in performance, according to CNBC.

"This 'new' chip, with 30 percent to 50 percent lower computing power than Blackwell, is a downgraded version of Nvidia's Blackwell chip, specially designed for the Chinese market," said Zhang.

Dubbed a customized, exclusive, or "castrated" version - similar to Nvidia's H20 chip for China - it typically meets export control requirements by reducing the number of compute cores, clock speeds, or other key performance metrics, said Zhang.

In July, Huang said the US government has granted export permits of its H20 chips to China. The company will begin the shipment soon, Huang said, China's state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The H20, which had been Nvidia's most powerful AI chip cleared for Chinese sales, was introduced after Washington tightened export controls in October 2023, read the CCTV report.

Earlier, Nvidia and AMD have reportedly agreed to share a portion of their sales revenue from China of certain chips as part of an unusual arrangement with the US administration in order to obtain export licenses to the Chinese market, the Financial Times reported on Monday. Nvidia has agreed to share 15 percent of its revenue from sales of its H20 chips in China, with AMD doing the same for its MI308 chips.

Asked to comment on reports that Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15 percent of their revenues from chip sales in China, under an arrangement to obtain export licenses for the semiconductors, Lin Jian, a spokesperson form the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Monday that China has made its position clear more than once on the US export of chips to China.

In a separate question about US export controls on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, Lin said that "China's position on opposing the politicization and weaponization of tech and trade issues, and on malicious blockade and suppression against China, is consistent and clear. Such practices disrupt the stability of global industrial and supply chains and are in no one's interests."