Trump Says US Will Block Other Countries From Nvidia’s Top Chips

Most partners believe that Trump’s statement on blocking other countries either was misspoken or would otherwise never happen.

When President Trump said Sunday that he won’t allow Nvidia to sell its most advanced AI chips to China, he seemed to escalate his rhetoric on semiconductor trade policy by also saying that every other country outside the United States won’t have access too.

“The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” Trump told CBS News’ 60 Minutes program.

The president made the statement immediately after he explained his stance that he will not let Nvidia’s most advanced chips into China, saying, “We will let them deal with Nvidia. Nvidia is the prime company in the world for that, and we will let them deal with Nvidia but not in terms of the most advanced.”

While Trump’s statement, on its face, seemed to suggest that the White House could be looking into new export restrictions for Nvidia’s most advanced chips—which include the Grace Blackwell Superchip that is sold in the company’s GB200 NVL72 rack-scale platform—Nvidia partners who spoke to CRN were not concerned.

That’s because most of the partners—represented by senior-level executives or directors and some of which have won Nvidia’s top partner awards—believed that Trump’s statement on blocking other countries either was misspoken or would otherwise never happen.

Nvidia, the White House and the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees export restrictions, did not respond to requests for comment.

The company’s stock price was up 2.17 percent today.

Nvidia Sees ‘Significant Opportunity’ In Sovereign AI Deals

This year, the AI infrastructure giant has touted major GPU platform deals with many commercial and government customers across the world. In September, for instance, Nvidia announced that United Kingdom-based AI infrastructure provider Nscale plans to use 300,000 Grace Blackwell GPUs worldwide, with 60,000 set for domestic deployment.

Just last Friday in South Korea, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company revealed government and commercial deals representing a total of 260,000 GPUs for AI data centers. While one deal was for Nvidia’s lower-end RTX Pro Blackwell 6000 Server Edition GPUs, the company did not say if any others included its most advanced Blackwell chips.

Many of these international deals have been highlighted as part of Nvidia’s “sovereign AI” strategy, which is focused on convincing nations across the world that they must build out their own AI infrastructure, workforces and business networks to advance their economies.

Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said in August during the company’s second-quarter earnings call that sovereign AI deals were on track on generate more than $20 billion in revenue this year, “more than double that of last year.”

She called this area “a significant opportunity for Nvidia.”

Partners Say They Are Not Concerned

Against the backdrop of this opportunity and Trump’s statement about the U.S. potentially blocking the sale of Nvidia’s top chips elsewhere, partners who spoke with CRN shrugged off the threat.

On the other hand, Dominic Daninger, vice president of Burnsville, Minn.-based systems integrator Nor-Tech, said he thinks Trump’s statement was meant to be aimed at U.S. adversaries like North Korea, Russia and Iran.

He didn’t think Trump would block other countries outside of China from Nvidia’s most advanced chips due to the United States’ history of collaboration with ally countries, such as the technology sharing that occurred between the U.S. and U.K. during World War II.

“That probably was a little loosely phrased,” said Daninger, whose company sells systems, including GPU-based platforms, to customers in the Middle East, Ireland and Vietnam.

Christopher Cyr, CTO of North Sioux City, S.D.-based systems integrator Sterling Computers, told CRN that he views any new restrictions on such products a part of doing business, adding that he believes Nvidia would “continue to innovate.”

“We’ve lived within the cycle of technological restrictions for eons,” he said.