The back-and-forth drama surrounding America's AI chip export policies has ratcheted up as US President Donald Trump visits China with a phalanx of US technology executives, including Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
For more than a year, Mr Huang has lobbied politicians in Washington and waged a public relations battle to convince the US to relax chip export policies so Nvidia can sell its H200 in China.
According to Reuters, the White House and the Department of Commerce have given the green light to approximately 10 Chinese companies to obtain Nvidia's H200s.
While some might believe the development as boding well for Nvidia, the company has sought to be completely unshackled from the export rules. Mr Huang insists the benefits of spreading US technology outweigh the dangers some have warned about.
Chris McGuire, a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Washington, is a critic of Nvidia's push to relax chip export policies.
In a post on X, he wrote: “It would triple the amount of AI computing power that China adds next year – before taking into account illegal smuggling.
“It would divert scarce AI compute resources away from US firms … this will help China close the gap with the US in AI."
The US has maintained strict export policies for some of the most powerful graphics processing units and central processing units deemed critical for building out AI infrastructure. The aim is to prevent other countries from surpassing America's AI dominance.
Mr Huang was not originally slated to join President Trump on his much-anticipated visit to Beijing. However, he was seen exiting Air Force One after it landed in China.
Several weeks ago, Nvidia's chief executive, stopping just short of naming any individuals, blamed technology executives with a “God complex” for “spreading hysteria about artificial intelligence”, which made it difficult to increase the market share of American AI chips in Chinese markets.
He also lashed out at politicians and executives who he said were spreading misinformation about AI potentially causing a labour disruption.
“The facts are, AI has created more than half a million jobs in the last couple of years,” he said during an appearance on Memos to the President, a podcast produced by the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), an AI think tank based in Washington. “The facts are, AI is our greatest, our best opportunity to reindustrialise the US.”
Apple's departing chief executive, Tim Cook, and Tesla's Elon Musk are also among the technology executives who joined Mr Trump on the state trip to China.
