The US has cleared Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s H200 AI chip, but the silicon still has not shipped.
According to Reuters, Washington has approved about 10 Chinese companies to buy Nvidia’s second-most-powerful AI chip, the H200, citing three people familiar with the matter. Not a single delivery has been made, leaving a big technology deal stuck in diplomatic glue.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is now looking for a breakthrough in China this week. Huang was not initially listed in a White House delegation to Beijing but joined the trip after an invitation from President Donald Trump.
Trump picked him up in Alaska on the way to a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, raising hopes the trip might finally unlock stalled H200 sales.
The stakes are not small. The US-China tech scrap is now snarling even approved trade, leaving Nvidia stuck between two governments with competing control issues.
Before US export curbs tightened, Nvidia controlled about 95 per cent of China’s advanced chip market. China once accounted for 13 per cent of Nvidia’s revenue, and Huang has previously estimated the country’s AI market alone would be worth $50 billion this year.
The US Commerce Department has approved about 10 Chinese companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com, to purchase Nvidia’s H200 chips, sources said.
A handful of distributors, including Lenovo and Foxconn, have been approved, the sources said. Buyers can purchase either directly from Nvidia or through those intermediaries.
Under US licensing terms, each approved customer can buy up to 75,000 chips. The identities of the approved buyers and their relationships with Nvidia and authorised distributors have not been previously reported.
Huang told state broadcaster CCTV on Thursday that he hoped Trump and Xi would build on their good relationship during talks in Beijing to improve two-way ties.
Despite US approval, the deals have stalled as Chinese firms pulled back after guidance from Beijing. The shift in China was partly triggered by changes on the US side, although exactly what changed remains unclear.
It appears that Beijing is under pressure to block or tightly vet the orders. US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick echoed that view at a Senate hearing last month.
“The Chinese central government has not let them, as of yet, buy the chips, because they’re trying to keep their investment focused on their own domestic industry,” Lutnick said.
China fears that imports could weaken its push to develop homegrown AI chips, including those from Huawei.
Huang has warned that US export controls are eroding the company’s foothold in the market, saying its share of AI accelerators in China has effectively fallen to zero.
US rules issued in January require Chinese buyers to show they have installed “sufficient security procedures” and will not use the chips for military purposes. Nvidia must also certify that it has enough inventory in the US.
Trump negotiated an arrangement under which the US would receive 25 per cent of the revenue from the chip sales. That structure requires the chips to pass through US territory before being shipped to China, since US law does not allow direct export fees.
The arrangement has sparked unease in Beijing over possible tampering or hidden vulnerabilities, which, to be fair, is a stunt that US intelligence has pulled before.
