Just recently, we learned that the US Secretary of Commerce was seriously hardening her tone towards NVIDIA. In vulgar language, she accused the company of constantly trying to circumvent American sanctions by designing hardware that barely complied. On the one hand, we can’t blame her, because with each new sanction, new products appear.
This time, she softens the tone by pointing out that NVIDIA can, will and must sell AI chips to China…
Gina Raimondo more mellow towards NVIDIA!
This is quite a turnaround… Or rather, her behavior. The Secretary’s recent statements are the antithesis of her previous ones:
“Nvidia can, will, and should sell AI chips to China because most AI chips will be for commercial applications”
More basically, she even seems to be encouraging the company to export AI-related hardware to China. However, she makes it clear that the government cannot allow them to sell their most powerful hardware. Reiterating that they don’t want the government to allow them to develop their most sensitive AI models.
Of course, sanctions are still the order of the day. The H100/A100/H800/A800 are still banned from the country. The same goes for the latest products designed to meet, just, the latest adjustments to these sanctions.
All that remains now is to find out what has been said behind the scenes in response to this change in tone. Jensen Huang and Rimondo met recently. One imagines that this meeting must have softened relations. Of course, NVIDIA has announced that the company will cooperate fully with the government and comply with the sanctions currently in place.
