Key Points
- Chinese tech giants such as ByteDance and Alibaba are interested in acquiring Nvidia’s H200 AI chip.
- The interest follows President Trump’s decision to allow the chip’s export to China.
- The final decision rests with the Chinese government, which has been promoting domestic chips.
- Chinese regulators are currently assessing the demand from local tech companies.
China’s largest tech companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, are making inquiries about buying Nvidia’s powerful H200 artificial intelligence chip. Their interest came immediately after U.S. President Donald Trump unexpectedly approved the export of the advanced technology to China.
The companies are eager to place large orders for the chip, which is Nvidia’s second-most powerful and nearly six times more powerful than the best model previously cleared for import into the country.
However, the entire plan hinges on approval from Beijing, which hasn’t come yet. In fact, the Chinese government has recently been pushing companies to use domestic chips instead of American ones, so its approval is far from certain.
Complicating the situation, Chinese regulators recently met with representatives from Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent to gauge their demand for the H200 and said a decision would be made soon. This suggests Beijing is carefully weighing the benefits of accessing top-tier technology against its goal of building a self-reliant tech industry.
Even if both governments agree, there’s another hurdle: supply. Sources say Nvidia is producing the H200 in very limited quantities as it focuses on its newer and more advanced Blackwell and Rubin chip lines.
Still, Chinese companies desperately need the H200. While their homegrown chips are improving, they still can’t match Nvidia’s performance for training large-scale AI models. “The training of leading Chinese AI models still relies on Nvidia cards,” one industry expert noted, predicting that if the deal goes through, the big tech firms will buy a lot of chips, but will likely do so “in a low-key manner.”
