As the United States considers tightening trade restrictions to prevent advanced chip technology from reaching China, Nvidia, a prominent U.S.-based chip manufacturer, is reportedly developing a version of its new artificial intelligence chips that adheres to these regulations.
Sources familiar with the situation indicated that Nvidia is collaborating with the Chinese distributor Inspur to launch and distribute a chip tentatively named the “B20” in the local market. This new chip is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025, although Nvidia has refrained from making an official comment on the matter.
Currently, Nvidia has three chip models engineered specifically to comply with U.S. export regulations, one of which is the H20. The company had previously reduced the price of the H20 to enhance competitiveness against local rival Huawei, but sales of the H20 have witnessed an upswing. Reports indicate that Nvidia anticipates selling over one million H20 chips in China this year, amounting to approximately $12 billion, despite existing U.S. trade restrictions. This figure is nearly double the sales projections for Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip.
However, the H20 chips may face challenges under potential future U.S. trade regulations, according to analysts from Jeffries. They estimate that during the annual review of semiconductor export controls in October, it is likely that the H20 could be banned from sale to China. Such a ban could manifest in several ways, including product-specific restrictions, lowering the computing power limit, or imposing memory capacity caps.
Furthermore, the U.S. might extend its export restrictions to chips sold to other countries in the region, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, or even to Chinese companies operating overseas, though the latter would be more complex to enforce, analysts noted.