Two Chinese nationals were arrested this week on charges that they sent tens of millions of dollars worth of advanced AI chips made by Nvidia Corp. to China in violation of US export restrictions, according to authorities.

Nvidia rejected Chinese accusations that its data center GPUs for AI include a hardware function that could remotely deactivate the chips, which is commonly called a "kill switch." "NVIDIA GPUs do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors," wrote Nvidia's chief security officer.

Two Chinese nationals were arrested in California and charged with illegally shipping tens of millions of dollars' worth of AI chips to China, including Nvidia H100s, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.