ByteDance and Alibaba have asked Nvidia about buying its powerful H200 AI chip after US President Donald Trump said he would allow it to be exported to China, four people briefed on the matter told Reuters.
The Chinese companies are keen to place large orders for Nvidia's second most powerful artificial intelligence chip, should Beijing give them the green light, two of the people said. However, they remain concerned about supply and are seeking clarity from Nvidia, one added.
Before Trump's decision to allow Nvidia's Taiwan-manufactured H200 to be exported to China, the most advanced AI semiconductor that could legally be exported to China was the H20. The H200 is almost six times as powerful as the H20.
The Chinese government has yet to give a clear answer to Trump's announcement on H200. In recent months, it has barred government-funded centres and Chinese tech companies from buying Nvidia's AI chips, Reuters has reported, pummelling Nvidia's market share in China.
The Information reported on Wednesday that Chinese regulators gathered representatives from companies including Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent Holdings and asked them to assess their demand for the H200.
The officials told the companies they would be informed of Beijing's decision soon, The Information said, citing sources.
Very limited quantities of H200 are currently in production, two other people familiar with Nvidia's supply chain said, as the US chip giant has been focused instead on its most advanced Blackwell and upcoming Rubin lines.
Chinese purchases expected to be low-key
Chinese companies are keen on the H200 as its ability to train AI models is currently unmatched by domestic equivalents which are more suitable for inference, said the sources.
Elite Chinese universities, data center firms, and entities affiliated to China's military have also sought to procure H200 chips through grey-market channels, according to a Reuters review of more than 100 tenders and academic papers.
Before Trump's announcement, anyone supplying Chinese entities with the H200 chip would be in breach of federal law preventing U.S. AI processors past a certain performance threshold from being sent to China.
The policy reversal has created an unusual situation where, in theory, older and less powerful Nvidia AI chips like the A100 and H100, two popular models in China, still fall under U.S. export controls but the H200 does not.
Nevertheless, Chinese companies anticipate authorities may need to review purchase requests and require them to provide use cases, the people said, as Beijing mulls the costs and benefits of allowing H200 imports at a time it wants to encourage sales of AI chips manufactured in China by the likes of Huawei and Cambricon.
"The training of leading Chinese AI models still relies on Nvidia cards," said Zhang Yuchun, a general manager at Chinese cloud service provider SuperCloud's solution and ecology units.
"I expect the leading Chinese tech companies to buy a lot although in a low-key manner," he added.
Asked about the H200, China's foreign ministry has only said that the country values cooperation with the United States.
The ministry declined to comment further on Wednesday.
