China has authorized ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent to purchase Nvidia's H200 AI chips, Reuters reports, citing four people familiar with the matter. The three tech giants can import more than 400,000 H200 chips combined. Additional companies are on a waiting list for future approvals.
The approval came during Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's visit to China. Huang arrived in Shanghai last Friday and has since traveled to Beijing and other cities. The Chinese government is attaching conditions to the approvals that are still being finalized. A fifth source told Reuters the licenses are too restrictive, and customers aren't converting approvals into orders yet. Beijing has previously discussed requiring companies to buy a certain quota of domestic chips before they can import foreign semiconductors.
The H200 is Nvidia's second most powerful AI chip, delivering roughly six times the performance of the H20. Chinese companies have ordered more than two million H200 chips, according to Reuters - far more than Nvidia can deliver. Beijing had previously held off on allowing imports to support its domestic chip industry. The U.S. approved exports in early January.
