NVIDIA reportedly stops production of H20 AI chips

NVIDIA has reportedly asked its suppliers to halt production of its H20 AI chips for the Chinese market. This comes after the U.S. government had initially blocked the sale of the H20 chips in China, citing concerns over their potential use in military AI technology. While the U.S. later allowed NVIDIA to resume selling the chips in China, Chinese regulators instructed major tech companies to stop new orders for the H20, citing security concerns. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang claimed that the company had addressed the Chinese government's concerns about a supposed "backdoor" in the chips, but a recent report suggests that the Chinese authorities' issues with the H20 were not solely due to security concerns. Apparently, they found certain remarks by a U.S. commerce secretary about keeping China from accessing the best American technology "insulting." NVIDIA is reportedly developing a more powerful AI chip, based on its Blackwell architecture, which will be capable of half the computing power of its Blackwell Ultra GPUs. The H20 is currently the most advanced AI chip NVIDIA can sell in the Chinese market.