Reports say the US Commerce Department has granted permission to 10 companies of China including Alibaba, Tencent, TikTok parent ByteDance, retailer JD.com, Lenovo and Foxconn to buy NVIDIA H200 processors. But according to Reuters, it has yet to deliver.
The US government finally approved the sale of H200 chips by NVIDIA to authorized Chinese consumers, after blocking the sale in December 2025 amid concerns it would help the development of China’s military technology.
China agreed to buy hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA H200 chips in January, with the first shipments going to three unidentified Chinese internet companies at the time, Reuters reported.
The H200 is one of the company’s most powerful AI chips, second only to its flagship B200 processors. The B200 is faster, but the H200 is still far more capable than the H20, which was approved for the Chinese market six months before the H200.
The H200-approved companies can buy up to 75,000 chips from NVIDIA directly or through intermediaries, but apparently they decided not to buy after the Chinese government advised them.
Reuters said China’s guidance was prompted by “unidentified moves” on the US side. It’s also worth noting that since the US banned exports to China, local Chinese businesses have started to make their own chips. China has been encouraging domestic companies to use chips from its own chip industry to promote it.
The reports say the Chinese government is also concerned about possible vulnerabilities in the H200 chips sold to its companies. This is because the chips have to pass through US territory for the US government to legally get its 25% cut from H200 sales.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang recently visited Beijing with President Donald Trump for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Earlier, Huang had warned the US government that its export restrictions were putting his company at a disadvantage in China. It is not known whether the visit will lead China to allow local companies to buy the H200.
