輝達公司表示，美國政府將開始要求該公司向中國出口 H20 晶片時必須獲得許可，此舉進一步加劇了該公司此前公開反對的限制措施。

該公司在周二提交的一份監管檔案中表示，美國政府已於周一通知輝達，該許可將“無限期”有效。

輝達表示，該公司目前預計將在第一財季從與 H20 產品線相關的“庫存、採購承諾和相關儲備”中計提約 55 億美元的費用。

此次披露是迄今為止最強烈的跡象，表明輝達的歷史性增長速度可能因美國政府加大對晶片出口限制而放緩。美國政府稱，輝達的晶片可用於製造超級電腦。

在拜登總統執政期間，美國於2022年限制了人工智慧晶片的出口，並於次年更新了規則，以阻止更先進的人工智慧處理器的銷售。H20是一款為中國設計的人工智慧晶片，其設計符合美國的出口限制規定。據估計，它在2024年創造了120億至150億美元的收入。

輝達首席執行官黃仁勳在2月份公司上一次季度財報電話會議上表示，來自中國的收入已降至出口管制前水平的一半。黃仁勳警告稱，中國市場的競爭正在加劇， 輝達連續第二年在其年度報告中將華為列為 競爭對手。

Nvidia的H20晶片與美國等國使用的H100、H200 AI晶片性能相當，但互聯速度較慢。

中國公司 DeepSeek 在今年早些時候發佈了顛覆市場的競爭性人工智慧模型，該公司在其研究中使用了 H20 晶片。

除了現有的中國出口管制外，根據拜登政府首次提出的“人工智慧擴散規則” ，輝達還從下個月開始面臨新的出口限制。 (invest wallstreet)

Nvidia says it will record $5.5 billion charge tied to H20 processors exported to China

KEY POINTS

• Nvidia said on Tuesday that it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion tied to exporting H20 graphics processing units to China and other destinations.
• The stock slid almost 5% in extended trading.
• The U.S. government, during the Biden administration, restricted AI chip exports in 2022 and then updated the rules the following year to prevent the sale of more advanced AI processors.

Nvidia said on Tuesday that it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion tied to exporting H20 graphics processing units to China and other destinations. The stock slid 6% in extended trading.

On April 9, the U.S. government told Nvidia it would require a license to export the chips to China and a handful of other countries, the company said in a filing.

The disclosure is the strongest sign so far that Nvidia’s historic growth could be slowed by increasing export restrictions on its chips, which the U.S. government says can be used to create supercomputers for military uses.

During President Biden’s administration, the U.S. restricted AI chip exports in 2022 and then updated the rules the following year to prevent the sale of more advanced AI processors. The H20 is an AI chip for China that was designed to comply with U.S. export restrictions. It generated an estimated $12 billion to $15 billion in 2024.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on the company’s last quarterly earnings call in February that revenue from China had dropped to half of pre-export control levels. Huang warned that competition in China is growing, and for the second straight year, Nvidia listed Huawei as a competitor in its annual filing.

China is Nvidia’s fourth-largest region by sales, after the U.S., Singapore, and Taiwan, according to Nvidia’s annual report. 53% of its sales went to U.S. companies in its fiscal year that ended in January.

Nvidia’s H20 chip is comparable to the H100 and H200 AI chips used in the U.S. and other countries, but it has slower interconnection speeds and bandwidth. It’s based a previous generation of AI architecture called Hopper introduced in 2022. Nvidia is now focusing on selling its current generation of AI chips, called Blackwell.

DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose competitive AI model R1 unveiled earlier this year upended markets, used H20 chips in its research.

In addition to the existing Chinese export controls, Nvidia also faces new restrictions on what it can export starting next month, under “AI diffusion rules” first proposed by the Biden administration.

Nvidia has argued that further controls on its chips would stifle competition and potentially even erode U.S. competitiveness in technology. The company previously said it moved some of its operations, including testing and distribution, out of China after the 2022 export controls.

At the company’s conference last month, when asked about Chinese export controls, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that the company works to comply with the law, but he also noted that about half of the world’s AI researchers are from China, and many of those work at U.S.-based AI labs.

In Tuesday’s SEC filing, Nvidia says that the U.S. government said on Monday that the license requirement for H20 chips would be in effect “for the indefinite future.”

Nvidia reports fiscal first-quarter results on May 28.