Nvidia aims to start shipping its high-end H200 AI chips to China by mid-February right before the Lunar New Year holiday, according to sources familiar with the matter as told to Reuters.
This development comes after President Donald Trump granted export permission in December, marking a notable turn in the ongoing restrictions on U.S.-produced advanced semiconductor sales to China, although this particular shipment comes with a 25% fee.
The U.S.-based chipmaker says the initial batch of these chip shipments may include 5,000 to 10,000 modules, which is equivalent to 40,000 to 80,000 of the company’s H200 AI chips.
However, all of these still remain in the “plans,” as they still need final approval from the Chinese government. There’s the worry that Chinese regulators may seriously contemplate whether to permit imports while simultaneously building and promoting domestic semiconductor self-reliance with the aim of playing catch up in the Global AI arms race.
The Trump administration’s decision to allow H200 shipments is also a policy reversal that stands as a larger fundamental shift in global semiconductor export control. The Biden administration had formerly prohibited any AI chips matching or exceeding the H200’s capabilities from reaching China, primarily based on national security and military concerns.
The H200 represents Nvidia’s top-tier offering, coming after its famous and widely used Blackwell chips, and designed primarily for training massive AI models that major companies use to power everything from chatbots to scientific simulations.
However, the H20, Nvidia’s downgraded export-controlled chip and which the H200 achieves six times greater processing power than, was sold to Chinese companies. For context, the H20 was specifically engineered to comply with U.S. export restriction by reducing memory and processing capability
Still, Trump’s policy reversal to allow the sale of H200 aims to slow down China’s domestic development of this new technology, as they still don’t have access to the Blackwell chips, the better version of the H200.
This stands as a U.S.’ bifurcation model that allows for the sale of H200s while restricting Blackwells, creating a system that intends to give China access to powerful but previous-generation technology and with the aim to preserve the U.S. frontier advantage.
With access to the H200, Chinese giants like Alibaba, Huawei, and other Big Tech companies, now have the necessary equipment to compete with their U.S. peers for AI inference workloads with cutting-edge chips, but not necessarily the most powerful tech.
This also puts pressure on Chinese domestic chip makers to accelerate roadmaps on the production of domestic semiconductors to meet global standards.
What remains to be seen is whether the Chinese government will allow for this sale to go through or reject it altogether while strategically focusing on the development and promoting of domestic semiconductors.
