Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he was surprised by Beijing’s questioning of the security of its H20 artificial intelligence chips and that it would be up to the US government to decide whether the company can produce a new product for the Chinese market.
Huang made the comments during a visit to Taiwan on Friday, where he had meetings scheduled with top executives from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the silicon foundry that makes Nvidia’s chips.
Huang said Nvidia was “surprised” by the doubts from China about the H20 as “they’ve requested and urged us to secure licenses for the H20 for some time and I’ve worked quite hard to help them secure the licences”.
The Chinese concerns about the security of the H20 chips, which were tailored-made for the Chinese market to comply with Washington’s export restrictions, were partly based on proposals by some US lawmakers that AI chips exported to China should have tracking features.