NVIDIA's CEO visits China for the third time this year as sales of the H20 AI chip restart.

      On Tuesday, NVIDIA announced the resumption of sales for its H20 AI chip tailored for the Chinese market, alongside the launch of a new RTX Pro GPU aimed at smart factories and logistics applications. The following day, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang spoke at the third China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing, marking his first address at the event in Chinese. He discussed NVIDIA's growth trajectory, the future of AI, and China's vital role in the global supply chain and AI ecosystem.

      Significance: This is Jensen Huang's third trip to China this year. He arrived early in Beijing and shared a photo with Xiaomi founder Lei Jun on social media. The U.S. government had banned exports of NVIDIA's H20 AI chip to China in April, making the recent approval to resume sales a major policy change expected to help NVIDIA regain traction in China's AI infrastructure market.

      Details: Huang delivered his speech at the Supply Chain Expo wearing a traditional Chinese Tang suit and began by speaking in Chinese. He mentioned that within the next decade, AI robots capable of truly understanding the physical world will transform factory operations.

      According to Huang, more than 1.5 million developers in China are leveraging NVIDIA's platform to bring their innovations to fruition. He highlighted that world-class open-source models like DeepSeek, Alibaba, Tencent Hunyuan, MiniMax, and Baidu Ernie Bot, which were developed and shared by China, are propelling the global advancement of AI.

      Huang stated in his speech that China's open-source AI is fostering global development by enabling participation from countries and industries worldwide in the AI revolution. Open collaboration also contributes to AI safety, enhances technical standards, establishes performance benchmarks, and improves security measures internationally.

      At the Supply Chain Expo, Huang informed a Yicai reporter that numerous orders for the H20 chip have already been placed, with some companies that pre-ordered awaiting delivery.

      Background: In late 2023, NVIDIA created the H20 AI chip specifically for the Chinese market after the U.S. government tightened export restrictions on high-performance GPUs, including the A100 and H100. The H20 was launched as a lower-spec but still powerful alternative, designed to meet U.S. regulations while catering to the needs of Chinese cloud service providers and AI companies.

      In April 2024, the U.S. government temporarily halted exports of the H20 and similar models due to national security concerns.

      Jessie Wu is a technology reporter based in Shanghai, covering consumer electronics, semiconductors, and the gaming industry for TechNode. You can reach her via e-mail at [email protected]. More from Jessie Wu.