China reportedly discouraged purchase of NVIDIA H20 chips after Lutnick remarks
Chinese regulators — including the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) — reportedly urged local companies to stop buying NVIDIA’s H20 AI chips after US commerce official Howard Lutnick made remarks in a CNBC interview that Chinese authorities found “insulting.” The story was reported by Engadget and cited other outlets.
Key points
- Howard Lutnick said the US doesn’t sell “our best stuff” to China and described a strategy of keeping China a step behind—comments that reportedly provoked Chinese regulators.
- CAC issued an informal notice asking major tech firms (e.g., ByteDance, Alibaba) to pause new H20 orders pending a national-security review; NDRC issued a similar informal notice against purchasing NVIDIA chips.
- The U.S. had blocked NVIDIA from selling H20 chips to China in April over national-security concerns, then allowed shipments again in July under revised terms.
- Reuters has reported NVIDIA is developing a China-specific chip based on its Blackwell architecture that may be more powerful than H20 but limited compared with Blackwell Ultra GPUs; export approval is still uncertain.
Full quote (from Lutnick on CNBC)
“We don’t sell them our best stuff, not our second best stuff, not even our third best. The fourth one down, we want to keep China using it… The idea is the Chinese are more than capable of building their own. You want to keep one step ahead of what they can build, so they keep buying our chips.”
Sources & further reading
- Primary report: Engadget — Engadget: China reportedly discouraged purchase of NVIDIA AI chips
- Additional coverage: Tech analysis — TS2.tech: Nvidia’s China-only AI superchip
- Search for related products on Amazon (H20/AI GPUs are datacenter products and may not be available retail): Search “Nvidia H20 GPU” on Amazon
Note: RSS parameters were removed from provided links. This post summarizes reporting and links to public coverage for further reading.
Originally reported by Engadget; summary compiled for posting.