Trump says China will not get Nvidia’s best computer chips

President Trump says Nvidia, the highly valuable chipmaker, will not provide its advanced Blackwell chips to China as the world’s largest economies vie to become the leaders in the artificial intelligence race.

Mr. Trump drew the red line during an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and again during a Sunday flight to Washington from his Florida estate.

“The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he said on the television program. 

On Air Force One, he said: “No, we don’t give that chip to other people.”

Blackwell chips are considered top-of-the-line semiconductors for large-scale AI performance and high-performance computing.

Their maker, Nvidia, is the most valuable company in the world by market capitalization, and AI is taking an outsized role in Wall Street trades, government policy and energy policy.

“The demand for power is going to go up and up and up,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference on Monday. 

“There will be executives, there will be companies, that have their Kodak Moment because they do not understand the speed at which AI is coming and the impact it’s going to have on their business,” Mr. Burgum said, using a term for firms that don’t adapt rapidly enough to technological changes.

He also said “the free world” cannot afford to lose the AI arms race.

Congressional lawmakers and others warned Mr. Trump not to give away critical chips for AI technology to Beijing as part of his negotiations with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week.

 The countries settled on a deal that lowered U.S. tariffs on Chinese products while Beijing relaxed controls on rare earth elements and increased soybean purchases from U.S. growers.

Mr. Trump said the chips issue didn’t come up, other than an expectation that China would negotiate directly with Nvidia. However, China is only supposed to get lower-level chips.

“We will let them deal with Nvidia, but not in terms of the most advanced,” Mr. Trump said on Air Force One. However, the administration is open to letting Nvidia and other tech companies send advanced equipment to other nations.

Microsoft on Monday said the Department of Commerce authorized a license to send advanced Nvidia chips to the United Arab Emirates.

It is part of Microsoft’s $15 billion investment in the Gulf nation to build AI capabilities.

“This is not money raised in the UAE,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “It’s money we’re spending in the UAE. And as we do everywhere in the world, we’re focused not just on growing our business but also on contributing to the local economy.”