A chip manufacture machine Photo: VCG
Dutch chip-making equipment manufacturer ASML Holding chief financial officer (CFO) Roger Dassen said on Wednesday it will be positive for chip demand if the US lifts restrictions on the sale of some artificial intelligence processors to China, Bloomberg reported.
“We talked about uncertainties – that’s one of those uncertainties,” Dassen said on the company’s earnings call on Wednesday, referring to the US restrictions. “If that ban were to be lifted, that could be seen as a positive for global chip demand for sure,” he said, according to the Bloomberg report.
ASML is the world’s biggest supplier of computer chip-making equipment, and it reportedly stands to benefit from higher market demand if its customers sell more to China.
Jensen Huang, CEO of US tech giant Nvidia, announced on Tuesday in Beijing that the company’s H20 chips will soon be shipped to the Chinese market as the US government has approved for the company filing licenses to start shipping H20s to China.
Huang touched on this topic at the media briefing session on Wednesday. “I hope to get more advanced chips into China than H20. And the reason is that technology is always moving on.”
Also, Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) followed with a similar announcement. AMD said on Tuesday that it will soon restart shipments of its MI308 artificial intelligence chips to China. Its stock climbed more than 6 percent following the news, CNBC reported.
These export license approvals could generate billions of dollars in total revenue for Nvidia and AMD this year and mark a dramatic reversal after the Trump administration said the issue “wasn’t even up for debate,” according to Bloomberg.
Responding to a media question over Nvidia’s latest announcement that it will be allowed to start selling the lower-grade AI chips to Chinese market, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian reiterated on Tuesday “China’s opposition to politicizing, instrumentalizing and weaponizing tech and trade issues and malicious attempts to blockade, and keep down China is consistent and clear. These actions will destabilize the global industrial and supply chains, and serve no one’s interests.”