As the United States considers stricter trade restrictions to prevent advanced chip equipment from reaching China, Nvidia, an American chipmaker, is reportedly developing a version of its new artificial intelligence chips to comply with those rules.
Nvidia is working on a variant of its new Blackwell AI chips for the Chinese market, according to a Reuters report citing unnamed sources. The chipmaker plans to collaborate with local distribution partner Inspur to introduce and sell the chip, tentatively named the “B20,” in China.
The B20 is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025, a source told Reuters. Nvidia declined to comment on the matter.
Nvidia has three chips specifically designed to adhere to U.S. export controls, including the H20 chip, which saw price cuts due to weak sales as it tried to compete with homegrown rival Huawei. However, sales of the H20 are now increasing, sources told Reuters. Nvidia is expected to sell more than one million H20 chips in China this year, generating about $12 billion in revenue, despite U.S. trade restrictions, according to the Financial Times, which cited data from SemiAnalysis. Nvidia’s projected sales nearly double those of Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip.
However, Nvidia’s H20 chips might face risks under forthcoming U.S. trade rules, according to Jeffries analysts. They anticipate that during the annual review of U.S. semiconductor export controls in October, it is likely that the H20 will be banned for sale to China. The ban could be implemented in three ways: through a product-specific ban, lowering the computing power cap, or capping memory capacity, analysts noted.
Analysts also suggested that the U.S. might extend export controls on chips sold to other countries in the region, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, or to overseas Chinese companies, although implementing these measures could be challenging.