- After a Mar-a-Lago dinner, Trump halted H20 chip export curbs to China, following NVIDIA’s US AI data center investment pledge.
- H20 chips, vital for AI, sparked US security concerns; China stockpiled them before the policy reversal.
- TSMC’s $100B US chip investment boosts domestic production, benefiting AI giants and securing supply chains.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang might have influenced Trump’s decision to halt the planned H20 chip controls. A $1 million-a-head dinner was held at Mar-a-Lago at the height of Trump’s tariff policies. As speculations grew over the high-profile meeting, Trump caught everyone’s attention after he made a complete turnaround to pause plans of imposing curbs on the export of NVIDIA’s H20 chips to China.
Notably, this reversal comes after months of planning the restrictions, highlighting the firm’s crucial role in this policy change. For context, NVIDIA has doubled down on its commitment to create more AI data centers within the United States. The H20 is the most advanced AI chip in the nation that is currently legally allowed to be exported to China.
It’s a key component for AI inference, used in technologies like advanced chatbots. Hence, Chinese firms have reportedly intensified their stockpile of H20 chips in anticipation of the ban. Several prominent voices in the U.S., like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley, have raised concerns about the possibility that China could exploit these chips to ramp up its AI and military capabilities.
Specifically, after a Chinese tech firm unveiled DeepSeek, an AI chatbot, it was considered a breakthrough by the tech industry due to its cost-effective approach in achieving remarkable output via the use of lower-grade hardware.
TSMC’s US Chip Investment to Benefit NVIDIA Amid DeepSeek AI Progress
Earlier, in March, Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC signed deals to inject $100 billion into US chip manufacturing over the next four years, as reported by TronWeekly. This massive investment aims to boost domestic semiconductor production, addressing both national security and economic concerns.
TSMC’s CEO C.C. Wei, revealed plans to build three new manufacturing plants in Arizona as part of their existing $65 billion commitment. Besides providing local employment, this expansion directly benefits tech giants like AMD, NVIDIA, Apple, and Broadcom, securing AI chip capacity and supply chains. ASML also stands to gain from increased lithography tool orders.