The path to this paradox began with Washington’s efforts to cut off Chinese access to advanced semiconductors. Over the past several years, Nvidia rolled out China-specific, reduced-performance versions of its Hopper GPUs, the A800 and H800. This was done in response to U.S. export restrictions announced in late 2022.

Donald Trump said he is considering allowing Nvidia to sell a more advanced chip in China after confirming that he “negotiated a little deal” in which the US will take a 15 per cent fee of the chipmaker’s artificial intelligence processor sales to the country.