China’s administrative capital, Beijing, has reportedly approved the sale of NVIDIA’s H200 chips, according to Reuters.
While still not confirmed officially by NVIDIA or Chinese authorities, sources have said that the supply of chips has been given the green light, an approval that would give NVIDIA access to a key market. The Chinese market has its own semiconductor industry, which mass-produces chips. But select Chinese companies are choosing to rely on America’s tech sector to help fill the gap for certain projects.
For instance, Bytedance, parent company of TikTok, was reportedly planning to use NVIDIA’s B200 chips to build out a set of 500 NVIDIA Blackwell systems at an estimated $2.8 billion cost.
Coupled with the Reuters report, CNBC, and NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang both confirmed the same approval.
Souring U.S.-China relations have played a major role in restricting trade between the two countries, and AI chips are one of the key goods that have yet to pass in the form of exports as a result. The tight restrictions for trade have only been loosened recently for AI chips. In February, the U.S. gave the green light for a controlled amount of H200 chips to be exported to China.
NVIDIA, AMD, and a handful of other companies in the American market have specialized versions of chips that are export-ready for the Chinese market.
Alongside its main H200 chip, NVIDIA is also preparing a version of the Groq AI chip. Not to be confused with AI chatbot Grok by xAI, the Groq AI chip is a specialized piece of AI infrastructure that fits within the rack-scale piece of AI infrastructure created as part of NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform.