ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, Oct 29 (Reuters) - U.S. President

Donald Trump said on Wednesday he will speak to Chinese

President Xi Jinping about Nvidia's ( NVDA ) state-of-the-art

Blackwell artificial intelligence chip at their expected meeting

on Thursday.

Sales of the U.S. firm's high-end AI chips to China have

been a key sticking point in protracted trade talks between the

world's two largest economies this year.

Beijing has long been irked by Washington's export controls

that ban Nvidia ( NVDA ) from selling its most advanced AI chips to

China. The U.S. has justified these restrictions by alleging the

Chinese military would use the chips to increase its

capabilities.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to

Gyeongju, South Korea, Trump praised Nvidia's ( NVDA ) Blackwell as the

"super-duper chip" and said he might speak to Xi about them,

without elaborating.

"I think we may be talking about that with President Xi,"

Trump said, adding he was "very optimistic" about his meeting

with Xi, the first since he returned to the White House.

Reuters in May reported that Nvidia ( NVDA ) was preparing a new chip

for China that was a scaled-down variant of its most recent

state-of-the-art AI Blackwell chips at a significantly lower

cost.

Nvidia ( NVDA ) CEO Jesen Huang said on Tuesday his company had not

applied for U.S. export licenses to send its newest chips to

China because of the Chinese position.

"They've made it very clear that they don't want Nvidia ( NVDA ) to

be there right now," he said at a news conference during the

company's developers event, adding it needs access to the China

market to fund U.S.-based research and development.

"I hope that will change in the future because I think China

is a very important market."

U.S. administrations have swung back and forth on allowing

Nvidia's ( NVDA ) advanced chips into China, vacillating on whether

access would make China more dependent on the U.S. technology or

give its military and tech companies a competitive boost.

Beijing has put pressure on Chinese firms to buy and further

develop domestic chips in response to U.S. export controls

targeting the sale of Nvidia ( NVDA ) chips to China.

Despite that pressure, Chinese developers still want

Nvidia's ( NVDA ) chips due to constrained supplies of products from

domestic rivals such as Huawei, Reuters has previously reported.