Trump says Nvidia won't ship top AI chips to other countries

Nvidia's Blackwell artificial intelligence chips, the most advanced in the company's lineup, will not be shipped from the U.S. to China or other countries, President Donald Trump said. Investors have so far reacted calmly - after October was the best month for Nvidia stock in 12 years and its capitalization reached $5 trillion for the first time in history.

In a Nov. 2 taped interview on CBS and in comments to reporters, Trump said that only U.S. customers should have access to Nvidia's top-of-the-line Blackwell chips. "The most advanced [chips] - we're not going to let anybody but the United States get them," Trump promised in the interview. Shortly before, while returning on the presidential liner to the White House after a weekend in Florida, the U.S. president told reporters, "We're not giving [Blackwell] chips to anyone else," Reuters reported. According to Trump, all of them will be reserved for U.S. companies, the agency noted.

These remarks suggest that Trump may impose tighter restrictions on the export of advanced American AI chips than US officials have previously indicated. In such a case, not only China, but also the rest of the world risks losing access to the most sophisticated semiconductors, the agency notes.

Although Trump promised in the CBS interview that he would not allow Blackwell chips to be sold to Chinese companies, he did not rule out supplying them with lower-performance versions. "We'll let them deal with Nvidia, but not in terms of the most advanced [chips]," the U.S. leader said.

Investors have so far reacted to Trump's statements without panic - Nvidia shares added 0.6% on the Blue Ocean ATS OTC platform on Nov. 3.

Nvidia last week became the world's first company with a capitalization of more than $5 trillion, while its outlook for the current quarter, which it is due to report on Nov. 19 as part of its financial disclosure, may exceed market expectations, UBS said on Oct. 29. The bank's analysts say Wall Street's consensus estimates for the main beneficiary of the AI boom are significantly understated.

In turn, Goldman Sachs on October 31 raised its benchmark on Nvidia shares from $210 to $240 per paper with a Buy rating - that's almost 19% higher than the quotations at the last close.

According to FactSet, the majority of analysts - 60 out of 66 - recommend Nvidia shares to buy. The average target price of $228.5 per share, calculated by the service, implies a potential upside of 13%.

Trump hinted that he might discuss Nvidia Blackwell chip shipments with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a meeting in South Korea last week, but ultimately said the topic was not brought up. According to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the company has not requested U.S. export licenses for the Chinese market because of the stance of Chinese authorities, who have "made it very clear that they don't want Nvidia's presence there right now."

Over the past week, the chipmaker's quotations rose by 8.7% amid statements by technology giants about increasing investments in infrastructure for AI. According to updated plans, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon together are expected to spend up to $375 billion on building data centers in 2025, The Washington Post calculated. This week, the topic of AI will remain in the center of attention of Wall Street - in particular, Palantir, Constellation Energy, Supermicro and AMD are to report quarterly results, notes Yahoo Finance.

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