Following successful efforts to secure approval from the Trump administration for H200 chip sales to China, Nvidia is now evaluating the possibility of increasing output as Chinese firms rush to place orders, according to a Reuters report that cites unnamed sources.
The H200 GPUs, which represent the most advanced models from Nvidia’s previous Hopper series and are designed for training large language models, were previously unavailable in China due to proposed restrictions from the Biden administration on advanced AI chip exports. However, the U.S. Department of Commerce recently granted Nvidia permission to sell H200 chips in China, with the condition that Nvidia shares 25% of the sales revenue from these chips.
Reuters notes that the surge in interest from Chinese companies has prompted Nvidia to consider expanding its manufacturing capacity. Despite this, Chinese authorities have not yet finalized a decision on whether to permit the import of H200 chips, which are reportedly much more powerful than the H20 GPUs that Nvidia had specifically tailored for the Chinese market.
For Nvidia, scaling up H200 production could unlock significant demand in China, a country eager to advance its own AI chip technologies. Western concerns over competition and national security have limited China’s access to the latest high-performance hardware for AI model development, leading Chinese companies to prioritize efficiency over sheer computational power.
Major Chinese tech firms such as Alibaba and ByteDance, both actively developing proprietary AI models, have already contacted Nvidia to discuss substantial orders for the limited-availability H200 chips, according to the report.
In a statement sent via email, an Nvidia representative emphasized, “We are managing our supply chain to ensure that licensed sales of the H200 to authorized customers in China will not affect our ability to supply customers in the United States.”