JUST IN: 10 CHINESE FIRMS HAVE BEEN APPROVED TO BUY NVIDIA H200 CHIPS. NOT A SINGLE DELIVERY HAS BEEN MADE.
Beijing has been telling its companies to hold off.
The full picture, per Reuters:
The approved buyers (~10 total):
• Alibaba $BABA
• Tencent
• ByteDance (private)
• JD. com $JD
• 6 others not named in the report
The approved distributors:
• Lenovo
• Foxconn
• Each approved customer can purchase up to 75,000 chips under U.S. licensing terms
Why no deliveries have happened:
• Chinese firms pulled back after guidance from Beijing
• Beijing wants to keep AI investment focused on domestic chips like Huawei's
• DeepSeek and other Chinese AI labs are increasingly pivoting to homegrown chips
• Two recent State Council supply chain security regulations are tightening scrutiny of foreign tech dependencies
The deal mechanics:
• Trump negotiated 25% of revenue from chip sales going to the U.S.
• Chips must physically pass through U.S. territory before being shipped to China
• Buyers must demonstrate "sufficient security procedures" and no military use
• NVIDIA $NVDA must certify sufficient U.S. inventory
The bigger picture:
• Before U.S. export curbs, NVIDIA had ~95% of China's advanced chip market
• China was 13% of NVIDIA's revenue at peak
• Huang has estimated China's AI market alone is worth $50 billion this year
• NVIDIA's share of AI accelerators in China has effectively fallen to zero
• Huang is currently in Beijing with President Trump for a summit with Xi Jinping