U.S. President Donald Trump said today that NVIDIA’s (Nvidia) advanced Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips will not be provided to “others.”
Reuters reported that NVIDIA is the world’s most valuable company and dominates the AI chip market. Since August, there has been speculation about whether Trump would allow the sale of some version of Blackwell chips to China. At that time, he hinted that he might approve the sale of NVIDIA's downgraded version of next-generation GPU chips to China.
However, Trump’s interview with the media on Air Force One, the U.S. presidential plane, showed that his administration is not inclined to widely export this sought-after chip.
Trump said on the plane returning to Washington after a weekend vacation in Florida: "The latest Blackwell chip is 10 years ahead of other chips." He added: "But no, we will not give this chip to others."
Trump had previously hinted that he might discuss the chip issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to South Korea last week, but in the end said that the two sides did not touch on this topic.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said last week that due to China’s stance on NVIDIA, the company has not yet applied for a sales license to China from Washington. "They've made it very clear that they don't want NVIDIA there right now," he said at a developer conference. Huang added that the company needs to enter the Chinese market to fund R&D in the United States.