The US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has said that the Biden administration was in talks with Nvidia about its sales of artificial intelligence microchips to China.

In an interview with Reuters, Raimondo said that Nvidia "can, will and should sell AI chips to China because most AI chips will be for commercial applications," but warned that the company will not be allowed to do deals with Chinese firms that are “the most sophisticated, highest-processing power AI chips, which would enable China to train their frontier models."

Raimondo confirmed that the “crystal clear talks” took place last week with Nvidia chief exec Jensen Huang who, she said, told the commerce secretary that “we don’t want to break the rules.”

"They want to do the right thing,” she said. “Obviously they want to sell as many chips as possible."

The Nvidia boss last week said that the company was working closely with the US government to ensure that sales of chips to China were compliant with export restrictions.

The US government is increasingly taking a firm stance on processor exports to China amid an evident technological arms race between the two countries.

Speaking at a forum last week, Raimondo said that the department had created a ‘cutline’ and that processor producers would work to that, stating “I am telling you if you redesign a chip around a particular cutline that enables them to do AI, I am going to control it the very next day."

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