This week · post, October 23

Allen: China AI chip ban won't cut NVIDIA revenue; no data

Gregory C. Allen, director of the AI center at the US think tank CSIS, argues that complete export controls on AI chips to China would not cost NVIDIA a cent of revenue. Allen posted on X a clip of Elon Musk on a recent earnings call. In the post, Allen wrote that Musk's AI company can't rent more NVIDIA GB300s and can't even find H100s (Gregory C. Allen, 2026-10-23). Allen went on: "If we had complete and total AI chip export controls on China, I don't think Nvidia's revenue would be one penny lower." Allen's reason is that the H200s now sold to China could otherwise serve American companies. Musk's own words are in the video, which hasn't been transcribed word for word. The post doesn't say which company's earnings call it was. This is Allen's personal judgment, with no sales data attached. How we checked →

Concept illustration: at upper left, three buildings lettered CHINA, NVIDIA and US COMPANIES stand in a row; red carts (one lettered H200) move along left-pointing arrows from NVIDIA toward CHINA, three gold coins follow a curved arrow from above CHINA to NVIDIA, a stack of coins sits inside NVIDIA, and two figures with hand trucks stand at the US COMPANIES doorway. Below, a hand holds a smartphone whose screen shows a video play button and grey lines, linked by small bubbles to a thought cloud at upper right. The cloud shows the same three buildings: a barrier lettered EXPORT CONTROLS stands in front of the shuttered CHINA building, an arrow points from NVIDIA to red carts (one lettered H200) beside US COMPANIES, and coins follow a curved arrow from above US COMPANIES to NVIDIA. A large black quotation mark sits at lower right.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Oct 26, 2026, alongside 5 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "Allen: China AI chip ban won't cut NVIDIA revenue; no data." https://secondsource.io/en/expert/2026-10-26-1/. Accessed access date.