At least $1 billion in Nvidia laptop chips were smuggled into China in the three-months span after President Trump imposed export controls on the cutting-edge chips, according to a bombshell report Thursday.
Nvidia’s {powerful} B200 chip – favored by US tech giants like OpenAI and Google to energy their artificial intelligence fashions – are banned for sale to China due to authorities guidelines limiting shipments for chips that exceed certain efficiency thresholds.
However, the chip was still being offered in May by Chinese suppliers to information heart operators that support China-based tech companies, the Financial Times reported, citing an evaluation of gross sales contracts, company filings and interviews with sources with direct data of the offers.
Nvidia’s most {powerful} chips are banned for sale to China. REUTERS
“Export controls will not prevent the most advanced Nvidia products from entering China,” a Chinese information heart operator instructed the FT. “What it creates is just inefficiency and huge profits for the risk-taking middle men.”
In May, the Trump administration had banned Nvidia from promoting less-powerful H20 chips that were particularly constructed by the company to adhere to earlier export controls imposed on their more {powerful} chips during the Biden administration.
However, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang revealed last week that Trump had reversed course and would enable H20 chips to be offered in China.
Critics have argued that China-based corporations were circumventing the export controls to purchase Nvidia’s {hardware}. That hypothesis surged earlier this 12 months after reports that China-based AI firm DeepSeek had a higher provide of Nvidia chips than it publicly admitted.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang lately revealed that Trump had lifted restrictions on H20 gross sales to China. Getty Images
The FT said it reviewed evidence that Chinese distributors in the Guangdong, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces had offered Nvidia’s B200 and other restricted chips such as the H100 and H200.
The FT said there was no evidence that Nvidia had any involvement or data of illicit chip gross sales to Chinese entities.
The company has long said that it complies with all US legal guidelines on chip technology.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is pictured. REUTERS
“Trying to cobble together data centers from smuggled products is a losing proposition, both technically and economically,” Nvidia said in a assertion. “Data centers require service and support, which we provide only to authorized Nvidia products.”
Last month, the chip provider turned the first public company in historical past to surpass a $4 trillion market valuation.