Blackwell a no-sell in China as trade deal fails to materialize

Nvidia's latest generation of Blackwell accelerators won't be available in China anytime soon, according to CEO Jensen Huang, who said there were no "active discussions" about selling the coveted chips to the Middle Kingdom.

The comments come as Nvidia increasingly finds itself cut off from the Chinese market. US lawmakers have repeatedly lobbied against allowing the sale of the GPU giant's most powerful AI chips to China.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, opposition to Western IT infrastructure has grown, with government officials reportedly pressuring tech titans to ditch Western suppliers in favor of domestic alternatives. Most recently, Chinese officials reportedly banned state-funded datacenters from deploying foreign AI chips.

"Currently, we are not planning to ship anything to China," Huang said during a visit to Taiwan on Friday, according to a Reuters report. "It's up to China when they would like Nvidia products to go back to serve the Chinese market. I look forward to them changing their policy."

Huang's comments appear to be specific to Nvidia's datacenter GPU products, as the chipmaker is still able to sell some lower-end Blackwell-based consumer cards in the region.

The Register reached out to Nvidia seeking clarification on Huang's comments; we'll let you know if we hear anything back.

Many had hoped to see Uncle Sam lift restrictions on the sale of Blackwell accelerators in China following claims by Donald Trump that he planned to discuss sales of the chip with Chinese President Xi Jinping. However, those discussions never materialized.

Despite this, Huang's revelations are unlikely to have any material impact on the AI arms dealer's financials in the near term. Nvidia's Q3 forecasts already excluded Chinese sales for the quarter, despite reaching an agreement with the Trump administration to resume shipments of its older Hopper-based H20 accelerators in exchange for cutting the feds in on 15 percent of revenues.

However, as CFO Colette Kress explained during the company's Q2 earnings call, as of August, the US government had not published regulations necessary to codify the requirement.

Even if Nvidia could hawk its wares in the Chinese market - something that Kress previously estimated would have added two to five billion dollars to its Q3 earnings revenue - demand in the region appears to have evaporated.

Nvidia is scheduled to hold its Q3 earnings call on Wednesday, Nov. 19. ®