US Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick says that Nvidia’s powerful H200 AI chips have not yet been sold to Chinese companies, reports Reuters. He said that this was due to difficulties faced by those firms to get permission from the Chinese government.
The Trump administration in January gave a formal green light to China-bound sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips with some conditions, despite concerns among China hawks in Washington that Beijing will harness the technology for military applications.
Shipments of the chips have been stymied by disagreements over the terms of the sales both in China and the US, sources told Reuters. “The Chinese central government has not let them, as of yet, buy the chips, because they’re trying to keep their investment focused on their own domestic industry,” Lutnick said, when asked about H200 sales to China at a Senate hearing.