US says China outfoxing it by rejecting Nvidia chips

China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp's H200 and is rejecting the AI chip in favour of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI czar David Sacks said, citing news reports.

- Bloomberg

President Donald Trump said on Monday he would allow shipments of Nvidia's H200 to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions like Huawei Technologies Co. by bringing American competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signalled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work.

“They're rejecting our chips,” Sacks said in an interview on Bloomberg Tech, citing an unspecified news article he had seen that day. “Apparently they don’t want them, and I think the reason for that is they want semiconductor independence.”

In a social media post Saturday, Sacks said he was referring to a Financial Times report that China was poised to limit access to the chips via a local approval process where Chinese buyers would need to justify their purchases.