Nvidia AI chips worth $1B smuggled to China after Trump export controls
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Summary
Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) processors worth at least $1bn were shipped to China in the three months after US president Donald Trump tightened controls on chip exports, according to the Financial Times.
The Nvidia B200 chip has become the most sought-after chip on the Chinese black market for American semiconductors, which is banned for sale to China, but is used by US firms such as OpenAI, Google and Meta for AI training.
However, after the Biden administration loosened rules on sales of the H20 chip, Chinese distributors started selling B200s to Chinese AI groups in May.
Industry experts have said that Nvidia’s H100 and H200 chips were also sold to China over the summer to an estimated total of more than $1bn.
