NVIDIA has reportedly told several of its suppliers to suspend work on its H20 AI chips meant for the Chinese market. According to The Information, the company instructed supply chain partners Amkor Technology and Samsung Electronics to pause their contributions, with the former handling advanced packaging and the latter supplying memory modules. Reuters added that NVIDIA also asked Foxconn, which provides backend processing, to halt its efforts.
The US initially blocked sales of the H20 AI chip in April, but later allowed NVIDIA to resume shipments to China in July. This arrangement reportedly involved giving 15% of the company’s revenue from the sales to the US government.
However, Chinese regulators instructed major firms such as ByteDance and Alibaba to halt new H20 orders, claiming that the chips could potentially be tracked and controlled remotely. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang acknowledged that authorities questioned the possibility of a “backdoor” but made it clear that no such mechanism exists.
A separate report suggested that the reluctance to embrace the H20 was not solely about technical concerns. Chinese authorities were also reportedly displeased with remarks by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who remarked that the chip was “the fourth one down” in NVIDIA’s product lineup. It is believed that Lutnick’s statement suggests that the US intended to limit China’s access to top-tier computing power while keeping developers dependent on American technologies.
Meanwhile, NVIDIA is said to be developing a more powerful Blackwell-based chip for the Chinese market. Expected to deliver about half the performance of its flagship Blackwell Ultra GPUs, the upcoming model would give the company a higher-tier option to sell under current export restrictions.
(Source: The Information / Reuters)