China blacklisted another Nvidia gaming chip during Huang's visit

Last week, Beijing banned the importation of a limited-performance gaming chip from Nvidia designed specifically for China. This happened during a visit to the country by the head of the company Jensen Huang, writes the Financial Times (FT) with reference to a copy of the relevant document in the possession of the editorial board, as well as two sources familiar with the situation. Huang arrived in China in a delegation with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the bilateral US-China summit.

The RTX 5090D V2 graphics card, introduced by Nvidia last August to comply with US export restrictions, was placed on a list of prohibited goods at Chinese customs checkpoints last Friday, Ma 15, the FT has found out. Prior to that, the Chinese blacklist, according to the newspaper, also included Nvidia's H200 chip, as well as the H20, another China-only product that the Huang-led company had previously sold in the Chinese market.

Although the RTX 5090D V2 was originally positioned as a product for retail consumers - gamers and 3D animators - Chinese AI developers and research labs have also been buying the gaming chip for access to Nvidia's Blackwell architecture, the FT notes. They used the hardware to train small language models and perform inferencing tasks (generating responses from AI models to end users).

Officials from China Customs and Nvidia did not respond to reporters' inquiries about the chip import ban.

Nvidia is expected to release its quarterly financial report after the close of the US trading session on Ma. 20 - market participants are waiting for information from the company about its possible return to the Chinese market, among other things. On the eve of the results disclosure, Nvidia shares grow by 2%.

The latest restrictions on imports of Nvidia chips to China demonstrate the Chinese authorities' tough stance aimed at pushing US chips - especially modified versions to comply with US export controls - out of the domestic market, the FT points out. As the race in the field of artificial intelligence between the US and China intensifies, Beijing relies on the support of domestic players, including Huawei and Cambricon. Thus, despite the fact that US regulators more than a month ago approved Nvidia's sale of H200 chips to such Chinese giants as Alibaba and Tencent, the deals were blocked by the Chinese side for similar reasons, the Financial Times writes.

Huang himself expressed cautious optimism after the end of his visit to China. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, he noted that he expects the Chinese market to gradually open up to US suppliers in the long term. In turn, Trump, returning to the States from China, on board the presidential plane confirmed that China "decided not" to approve the purchase of H200 chips because it wants to develop its own technology.

Amid high demand from Chinese companies looking for local alternatives to Nvidia products, Huawei is likely to take the largest share of the Chinese AI chip market, according to the FT. Sales of the company's AI chips could grow by at least 60% this year, the newspaper said.

Morgan Stanley analysts forecast that by 2030, the Chinese market for artificial intelligence chips will reach $67 billion, with 86% of this share controlled by local suppliers. For comparison, in fiscal year 2025 Nvidia dominated this market in the PRC, - then the American company received from the sales of China (mainly H20 chips) more than $17 billion.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor