Trump open to Nvidia selling downgraded Blackwell AI chip to China

U.S. President Donald Trump has signaled that he’d be open to allowing Nvidia to sell a downgraded version of its most advanced artificial intelligence chip to China.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Trump said that he could make a deal with Nvidia if it could reduce the performance of its Blackwell system.

“It’s possible I’d make a deal” on a “somewhat enhanced — in a negative way — Blackwell” processor, Trump said. “In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it.”

Trump indicated that he will meet with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang regarding the Blackwell.

“On the Blackwell, I think he [Huang] is coming to see me again about that,” Trump said, adding that the Blackwell system is the “latest and the greatest in the world.”

Last month, Huang, who has lobbied Trump for access to the Chinese market after effectively being shut out, said he hopes to sell more advanced chips to China.

The flurry of activity around semiconductors comes after Nvidia and AMD agreed to a deal to pay the U.S. government a 15% cut of revenue from chip sales to China in exchange for export licenses. Trump said he initially asked for a 20% cut but that the number came down to 15% after Huang negotiated.

If the downgraded Blackwell chips were approved for export, it “would be a big deal going forward,” said Paul Triolo, partner and senior vice president for China at advisory firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.

“The idea here is to addict China to substandard, or non-cutting edge technology, Triolo added.

Nvidia’s Huang has often touted the idea that if China is cut off from American chips then domestic tech firms like Huawei will fill the void. He has argued that U.S. chips should be sold in China so that Chinese firms are dependent on them when developing their AI technology.

Washington’s chip export regime has evolved over the past few years. Nvidia was blocked in 2022 from exporting its A100 and H100 chips to China — chips that are crucial for training large AI models. In 2023, the U.S. placed additional export curbs on more Nvidia semiconductors.

Chinese firms stockpiled these chips and have been using them to build their AI models. These chips were acquired legally and are still being used to train models, according to Triolo.

It’s not yet clear what kind of capabilities a downgraded Blackwell system for China would have and if it would be suitable for training more advanced models. In the meantime, Huawei is continuing to develop its Ascend series of processors, which it is trying to position as an Nvidia alternative.

“We are in sort of a transition point of running out of those stockpiles of earlier acquired Nvidia GPUs and hoping that Huawei’s new Ascend series of processors will be capable of replacing those but they are not quite capable of doing that yet,” Triolo said.

“Probably next year Huawei will have a new version of its 910 processors that will be more competitive with Nvidia.”