A prominent US lawmaker has voiced opposition to Nvidia resuming sales of its H20 AI accelerator chip to China, after the company said last week it expected to do so soon.

Republican Representative John Moolenaar, the head of a House of Representatives panel on China, said in a letter to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that sales of the H20 to China would reduce the US’ AI advantage and could help China’s AI models gain global market share.

He said the original decision in April to ban H20 sales was “the right call”.

Competition

He said the Chinese government would use American AI chips to “power its military, censor its people, and undercut American innovation”.

The US in April blocked exports to China of AI chips from Nvidia and AMD, as well as software for designing semiconductors, amidst White House trade negotiations that have included fluctuating threats of tariffs.

Lutnick said last week that the planned resumption of the H20 chip was part of US-China negotiations around China’s exports of rare earth materials and magnets.

The US has also recently allowed exports of chip design software to resume.

After the ban was announced Nvidia wrote off more than $5 billion (£3.7bn) related to the H20 chip.

Since then the company has not had a product it could export to China, a situation that has boosted the efforts of domestic players, led by Huawei Technologies, to develop alternatives.

Trade negotiations

Nvidia said last week it had been assured by administration officials that it would be granted the necessary licences to export the H20 chip to China and hoped to resume shipments soon.

The chip was developed specifically for the Chinese market, one of Nvidia’s biggest markets, to comply with a previous round of export controls.

The White House has also eased previous export restrictions on other AI technologies, as the administration uses exports as a tool for trade negotiations.