By Alexandra Alper
(Reuters) –Nvidia‘s advanced Blackwell chip for artificial intelligence would not be available to “other people,” U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday.
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, dominates the market for AI chips.
Questions have swirled about whether Trump would allow shipments of a version of the Blackwell to China since August, when he suggested he might allow sales of a scaled-down version of Nvidia’s next-generation advanced GPU chip in China.
However, Trump’s remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One suggest his administration may not be inclined to grant broad overseas access to the prized chip.
“The new Blackwell that just came out, it’s 10 years ahead of every other chip,” Trump said as he flew to Washington after a weekend in Florida. “But no, we don’t give that chip to other people,” he added.
The possibility that Blackwell chips might be sold to Chinese firms has drawn criticism from China hawks in Washington, who fear the technology would supercharge China’s military capabilities and accelerate its AI development.
Republican Congressman John Moolenaar, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, said such a move “would be akin (to) giving Iran weapons-grade uranium.”
Trump had hinted he might discuss the chips with Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of their summit in South Korea last week, but ultimately said the topic did not come up.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last week that Nvidia has not sought U.S. export licenses for the Chinese market because of Beijing’s stance on the company.
“They’ve made it very clear that they don’t want Nvidia to be there right now,” he said during a developers’ event, adding that it needed access to China to fund U.S.-based research and development.
Nvidia said on Friday that it would supply more than 260,000 Blackwell AI chips to South Korea and some of the country’s biggest businesses, including Samsung Electronics.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper and Jasper Ward; Editing by Sergio Non and Himani Sarkar)
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