US government bans NVIDIA from selling H20 AI GPUs to China for the 'indefinite future'

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you.

The US government has just banned NVIDIA and its H20 AI GPUs from entering China, with the company taking a $5.5 billion hit in Q1 2025 earnings.

NVIDIA has warehouses full of its H20 AI GPU and were preparing mass shipments to China, but President Trump's latest US export restrictions are now making waste to those $5.5 billion worth of AI chips. H20 was designed to offer a precise amount of AI workload performance that skirted around US export controls, and now those chips are sitting around doing nothing and NVIDIA is taking a $5.5B hit this quarter.

The kicker is that NVIDIA custom-tuned the H20 AI GPU after the increasing US export regulations, so this isn't just another card but a tailor-made chip for Chinese companies like Alibaba and TikTok parent company ByteDance, to enjoy enough AI power without hitting those restrictions.

The US Commerce Department said in a statement yesterday: "The Commerce Department is committed to acting on the President's directive to safeguard our national and economic security".

• Read more: NVIDIA could experience more China GPU export restrictions from the Trump administration

The announcement from NVIDIA saw financial ripple effects across global markets, with Asian stocks and US futures dipping, with tech investors taking the news that US-China chip wars were only just heating up.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is in China right now, and I'm sure those meetings are incredibly stressful to be in. We won't know what's happening exactly, but I'm sure we'll have more news regarding NVIDIA, the US government and its export restrictions, and China soon enough.

Chinese tech giant Huawei just unveiled its new Ascend 920 AI chip hours after news broke that NVIDIA's H20 AI GPU was banned in the country... so things really are heating up for China and AI right now.