H200 chips: Nvidia plans to start deliveries to China in mid-February

US chip manufacturer Nvidia has informed Chinese customers that it plans to begin delivering its second-most powerful AI chips to China before mid-February. This was reported on Monday by the news agency Reuters, citing several individuals familiar with the matter.

The first orders are said to be fulfilled from existing stock, according to the report. The deliveries will reportedly amount to a total of 5,000 to 10,000 chip modules, which corresponds to approximately 40,000 to 80,000 H200 AI chips. Furthermore, Nvidia has informed Chinese customers that it intends to create new production capacities for the chips. Orders for these capacities are expected to be possible from the second quarter of 2026.

However, Beijing has not yet approved any H200 purchases, which is why the timeline could shift depending on the decision of the Chinese government, one of the sources told Reuters. Everything depends on official approval.

Political tug-of-war over approvals

The planned deliveries would be the first shipments of H200 chips to China. These were announced by US President Donald Trump in early December. However, Nvidia is reportedly required to pay 25 percent of the revenue as a penalty tax to the US Treasury. So far, US companies are only allowed to sell slow AI accelerators to China. The US government justifies this with security concerns, as the Chinese military could use the hardware for its own AI training.

The export permit thus represents a significant political U-turn. The US administration of Joseph Biden had issued extensive export restrictions for particularly fast AI chips from US chip manufacturers like Nvidia to China. In the summer, Washington then granted initial approvals for the export of Nvidia's H20 accelerators, specifically developed for the Chinese market, to the People's Republic, which Beijing, however, rejects. The Chinese government sees intentionally built-in security vulnerabilities and fears that the US could deactivate the H20 chips remotely in the event of an escalation of the conflict between the two countries. H200 is about six times more powerful than H20, but not as efficient as the Blackwell series (GB100, GB102, GB200). Trump wants to reserve the Blackwell chips exclusively for customers in the United States.

As Reuters further reports, Chinese officials held crisis meetings earlier this month to discuss the H200 chip shipments. One proposal reportedly involves linking every purchase of H200 chips with a fixed proportion of domestic chips. However, a final decision in this matter has likely not yet been made.

(akn)