The US has approved about 10 Chinese companies to buy Nvidia’s second-highest-powered AI chip, the H-200. But not a single chip has been delivered so far, said three people familiar with the matter. As a result, this major technology deal is now stuck in limbo. In such a situation, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is trying to make progress in China this week. Reuters news.
According to a source, Jensen Huang’s name was not included in the list of the White House delegation to Beijing. Later, he joined the tour at the invitation of US President Donald Trump. Trump himself accompanied him on his way to Beijing to attend a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The visit raised hopes that the stalled effort to sell the H-200 chip to China might finally make progress.
The importance of this situation is great. It shows that the US-China technology rivalry has reached a point where even authorized trade is getting bogged down. As a result, the world’s most valuable company and top chip maker Nvidia is caught between the two countries’ conflicting national priorities.
Before the US tightened export controls, Nvidia controlled about 95 percent of China’s advanced chip market. At one point, 13 percent of the company’s total revenue came from China. Jensen Huang said earlier that the value of China’s AI market alone will reach 5 trillion dollars this year.
Sources said the US Commerce Department has approved about 10 Chinese companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com, to buy Nvidia’s H-200 chip. A few firms such as Lenovo and Foxconn have also been approved, they said on condition of anonymity. Authorized buyers can purchase chips directly from Nvidia or through these intermediaries. According to US licensing policy, each authorized customer can purchase a maximum of 75,000 chips.
A spokeswoman for the US Commerce Department, which oversees export controls for products such as H-200 semiconductors, declined to comment. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission also did not respond to requests for comment. Lenovo confirmed in a statement to Reuters that the company is ‘one of the few companies approved to sell the H-200 in China as part of Nvidia’s export license.’
Nvidia, Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, JD.com and Foxconn did not respond to requests for comment. On Thursday, Jensen Huang told China’s state broadcaster CCTV that he hopes Trump and Xi Jinping will take their ‘good relationship’ further and improve the relationship between the two countries during the meeting in Beijing.
