By Ben Blanchard and Wen-Yee Lee
TAIPEI (Reuters) -Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrived in Taipei on Friday to visit chip foundry partner TSMC, as the world’s most valuable company navigates rising friction between Washington and Beijing over access to its industry-leading AI chips.
“My main purpose coming here is to visit TSMC,” he told reporters, adding that he would only stay a few hours and leave after dinner with TSMC leaders, according to a live feed broadcast by local media at Taipei’s Songshan airport, where he landed in a private jet.
He also said that TSMC had asked him to deliver a speech. TSMC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this month opened the door to the possibility of more advanced Nvidia chips beyond the H20 being sold in China, and reached a deal with Nvidia and AMD under which the U.S. government would receive 15% of the revenue from sales of some advanced chips in China.
Reuters this week reported that Nvidia was working on a new chip tentatively named the B30A based on its latest Blackwell architecture that will be more powerful than the H20 model.
Asked about the B30A, Huang said Nvidia was in talks with the U.S. over offering China a successor to its H20 chip, but that it was not the company’s decision to make.
“It’s up to, of course, the U.S. government, and we are in dialogue with them, but it is too soon to know.” he said.
Nvidia only received permission in July to recommence sales of the H20. It was developed specifically for China after export restrictions were put in place in 2023, but the company was abruptly ordered to stop sales in April.
Shortly after Washington’s greenlight, Nvidia placed orders for 300,000 H20 chips with TSMC to add to its existing inventory due to strong demand from Chinese companies, Reuters reported. But Nvidia was days later hit by allegations from China’s cyberspace regulator and state media that the U.S. company’s chips could pose security risks.
Chinese authorities later cautioned Chinese tech firms about purchasing the H20, raising concerns about potential information security risks. Nvidia says its chips have no backdoor risks.
Foxconn has been asked by Nvidia to stop work related to the H20 chip, Reuters reported on Friday citing two people briefed on the matter. A third source said that Nvidia wanted to first work through its existing H20 inventory.
Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trade publication The Information reported on Thursday that Nvidia instructed Arizona-based Amkor Technology to stop production of its H20 chips this week and also notified South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, citing two people with direct knowledge of the communications.
Amkor handles advanced packaging for the chip, while Samsung Electronics supplies high-bandwidth memory chips for the model.
Neither company immediately responded to a Reuters request for comment.
Asked whether Nvidia had asked suppliers to halt production, Huang told reporters in Taipei that they had a significant number of H20 chips prepared and were now waiting for purchase orders from China customers.
“When we receive the orders, we would be able to purchase more,” he said.
“We constantly manage our supply chain to address market conditions,” Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement, adding, “As both governments recognise, the H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure.”
Huang said that shipping the H20 to China was not a national security concern and that the ability to ship the H20 chips to China was “very much appreciated”.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Wen-Yee Lee in Taipei; Additional reporting by Yazhini MV, Rhea Rose Abraham and Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru, Fanny Potkin in Singapore and Liam Mo in Beijing, Writing by Brenda Goh; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Sonali Paul)
