DeepSeek Uses Nvidia H20 Chip... US Says 'No Export Restrictions to China'
Summary
- The Trump administration announced that it has withdrawn its plan to restrict the export of Nvidia's H20 chip to China.
- Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is gaining attention for using H20, and it was excluded from the regulation list after promising investments in US AI data centers.
- Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance are securing quantities by placing large orders for Nvidia AI chips.
Jensen Huang Attends Trump Dinner Last Week
Promises Investment in US Data Centers
The Trump administration has announced that it will not impose export restrictions on Nvidia's H20 chip, a leader in artificial intelligence (AI) chips, to China.
US public broadcaster NPR reported on the 9th (local time) that the Trump administration has withdrawn its plan to restrict exports of Nvidia's H20 chip to China. H20 is the highest-spec AI chip legally available to China. The US restricts the export of cutting-edge semiconductors to China for security reasons.
H20 has lower performance than Nvidia's latest AI chip, Blackwell, but some performance has been improved by equipping it with high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in Blackwell.
The US government has been preparing additional export restrictions for several months since the Biden administration. It is known that H20 was also included. H20 has drawn attention as it is known to be one of the chips used by Chinese AI startup DeepSeek.
Sources explained that additional export restrictions were scheduled to be implemented this week, but H20 was excluded from this regulation list. NPR reported that H20 was excluded after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attended a dinner at Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago last week.
The media also reported that CEO Huang promised new investments in AI data centers in the US at this dinner, and the Trump administration's policy changed afterward. The specific scale of the investment is not known.
Previously, IT specialized media The Information reported that Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance ordered more than $16 billion (23.5 trillion won) of Nvidia's AI chip H20 from January to March this year. As the US government has been regulating semiconductor exports to China since 2022 and it was expected that export restrictions would extend to H20, Chinese companies were securing quantities in advance.
Subin Park, Hankyung.com reporter waterbean@hankyung.com
Korea Economic Daily
hankyung@bloomingbit.ioThe Korea Economic Daily Global is a digital media where latest news on Korean companies, industries, and financial markets.
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