July 15, 2025 – Nvidia announced on July 15, 2025, that it will resume sales of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, following assurances from the U.S. government under President Donald Trump that export licenses will be granted. This reverses an April 2025 ban imposed by the Trump administration, which had restricted H20 chip exports due to national security concerns over their potential use by the Chinese military. The decision comes amid a preliminary U.S.-China trade deal in June 2025, where China agreed to resume rare earth exports and the U.S. eased some tech export curbs.
Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, who met with Trump and U.S. policymakers last week, emphasized the company’s commitment to supporting U.S. job creation and global AI leadership. Huang also met with Beijing officials to promote AI cooperation, highlighting the H20 chip’s role in China’s AI development for companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, ByteDance, and DeepSeek. The H20, designed to comply with earlier Biden-era restrictions, is less powerful than Nvidia’s H100 but remains critical for China’s AI market, which accounted for 12.5% of Nvidia’s revenue in 2024 despite earlier curbs costing the company $5.5 billion.
The policy shift follows Huang’s lobbying efforts and a temporary truce in the U.S.-China tariff war, with a deadline for a long-term deal set for August 12, 2025. Nvidia also unveiled a new GPU tailored for China’s AI-driven smart factories and logistics. Chinese tech stocks, including Alibaba and Tencent, rose 1-2% on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index after the announcement. However, critics, including Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), argue that easing restrictions could bolster China’s AI capabilities, citing Huawei’s competing 910C chip as evidence of growing local innovation.