Beijing officials plan to approve some Nvidia imports as soon as this quarter after they forced Chinese firms to pause their orders for the Silicon Valley firm’s H200 chips, according to reports.
China is preparing to allow local tech firms to buy the H200 chip for select commercial use, though it will still be banned from the military, government agencies and state-owned enterprises over national security concerns, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
The planned approval still represents a major win for Nvidia, which has effectively been banned from selling AI chips to customers in China – the world’s largest semiconductor market – since 2022. That squeezed Nvidia’s market share in China down from 95% to zero, according to CEO Jensen Huang.
Nvidia declined to comment. The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Chinese officials have been meeting with local tech companies in recent weeks to debate whether they should allow Nvidia imports and weigh potential regulations like requiring firms to buy a certain ratio of Chinese chips alongside any H200 purchases, sources told the Information.
The Chinese government told tech companies to halt their orders for H200 chips this week to prevent local firms from rushing to stockpile foreign semiconductors before it reaches a decision, a source told the outlet.
After President Trump in December reversed a Biden-era ban that restricted Nvidia from selling its H200 chips to China, on the condition that Nvidia gives 25% of the resulting revenue to the US government, Chinese customers rushed to place their orders.
The White House argued that Nvidia should be able to sell its H200 chips to China because it is a less advanced model compared to newer chips – a move that could help Nvidia regain billions of dollars in lost business from the massive market.
Nvidia has been placing unusually strict requirements around these orders, forcing Chinese customers to submit full upfront payments for its H200 chips, sources told Reuters.
The company has not been giving Chinese customers any options to cancel, request refunds or change the configurations of their orders, according to the report.
Nvidia has been particularly stringent about H200 payments since it is unclear whether Chinese regulators will actually allow the shipments, a source told Reuters.
As of last month, Chinese tech firms had placed orders for more than 2 million H200 chips – more than Nvidia’s inventory of 700,000, according to Reuters.
Each semiconductor is priced at roughly $27,000.
Alibaba and ByteDance have both privately told Nvidia that they are considering ordering more than 200,000 units each of the H200 chips, according to Bloomberg.
Demand from China has been so high that Nvidia needed to request additional capacity from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, its primary supplier, according to the Information.
Huang nodded to that strong demand during the CES tech conference in Las Vegas this week, though he said Nvidia is unsure when China might give its chips a stamp of approval.
Nvidia typically sells its AI chips to server manufacturers like Dell Technologies, Super Micro Computer and Lenovo, which build the semiconductors into systems before selling to customers.
Chinese rivals like Huawei Technologies and Cambricorn have been racing to catch up with Nvidia’s tech and are currently planning to ramp up production in 2026, scooping up some of the market share left in Nvidia’s absence. But Beijing still lacks AI processors on par with Nvidia’s models, experts say.
