China plans to approve some imports of Nvidia Corp’s H200 chips as soon as this quarter, people familiar with the situation said, giving the company access to a critical market.
Chinese officials are preparing to allow local companies to buy the chips from Nvidia for select commercial use, the people said.
However, the H200 chip would be barred from the military, sensitive government agencies, critical infrastructure and state-owned enterprises due to security concerns, they said.
Photo: Reuters
If these organizations still ask to use the component, applications would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, the people added.
Even with the qualifications, the move represents a win for Nvidia. China is the world’s largest market for semiconductors, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) has said that the artificial intelligence (AI) chip market alone could generate US$50 billion in the coming years. In the US firm’s absence, local rivals such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Cambricon Technologies Corp (寒武紀) have thrived and plan to sharply increase production this year.
The H200 is an older-generation chip that the US President Donald Trump’s administration has said can be exported to China. The US government restricts sales of more advanced processors on national security grounds. Nvidia is the leading maker of AI accelerators — the chips that help develop and run AI models — which are highly prized by data center operators.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) have privately told Nvidia that they want to order more than 200,000 units each of the H200, a person familiar with the matter said.
Both companies — alongside prominent Chinese start-ups, including DeepSeek (深度求索) — are rapidly upgrading their models to compete with OpenAI and other US rivals.
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