The AI Policy Podcast What Selling Nvidia's Blackwell Chips to China Would Mean for the AI Race
Nov 5, 2025
Georgia Adamson, a technology fellow at the Institute for Progress, and Saif Khan, a distinguished technology fellow and former U.S. Department of Commerce counsel, dive into the ramifications of exporting NVIDIA's Blackwell chips to China. They discuss the geopolitical landscape, the B30A's potential impact on AI competition, and the delicate balance of export controls. With insights into China's manufacturing constraints and the implications for U.S. chip supply, they paint a picture of a high-stakes rivalry in the tech world.
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What The B30A Likely Is
- The B30A is plausibly a half-strength Blackwell chip with one die and four HBM stacks, roughly half the B300's performance.
- That implies ~30,000 TPP and far higher price-performance than China's existing H20 or Ascend 910C.
B30A Widely Outperforms Current Chinese Options
- The B30A would be roughly 12.6x better than the H20 by TPP and several times better in price-performance than China's Ascend 910C.
- That performance gap would make B30A very attractive to Chinese cloud and AI labs despite being a “downgraded” part.
Specs Aren't The Whole Story
- Hardware specs understate real-world value; software stack, reliability, and utilization matter hugely for cluster performance.
- Chinese chips suffer low utilization (~30%) and reliability shortfalls versus NVIDIA, reducing their effective competitiveness.