China Could Reportedly Let BABA, ByteDance, DeepSeek Buy NVDA H200 Chips — But Supply May Be Tightly Capped

• Chinese officials have indicated that companies receiving approval would be allowed to use H200 chips only for AI training.
• For inference workloads, Beijing wants firms to prioritize domestically developed processors.
• China is considering approving fewer than 200,000 H200 chips in total, less than half of what companies had requested earlier this year.

The Chinese government is reportedly planning to allow select AI companies to buy Nvidia Corp.’s (NVDA) H200 chips in limited quantities.

According to a report by The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, Chinese officials informed Alibaba Group Holding (BABA), ByteDance, and DeepSeek that they would soon be allowed to buy H200 chips.

Nvidia shares were up nearly 1% in Wednesday morning’s trade. NVDA was the top trending ticker on Stocktwits at the time of writing.

Why China Is Easing Its Stance On NVDA

According to the report, Beijing's shift reflects mounting pressure from China's AI industry, where companies have struggled to secure enough high-end processors to train increasingly sophisticated AI models.

The report said Chinese officials have indicated that companies receiving approval would be allowed to use H200 chips only for AI training. For inference workloads, however, Beijing wants firms to prioritize domestically developed processors, reflecting its broader push to support China's homegrown semiconductor industry while reducing dependence on foreign technology.

Even with the policy change, the government is expected to impose strict limits on purchases. The report said Beijing is considering approving fewer than 200,000 H200 chips in total, less than half of what companies had requested earlier this year. It has also directed firms to use the chips only for processing public data, not sensitive customer information, the report added.

Why This Matters For NVDA

Approval from the Chinese government for the H200 chips would come as a relief to Nvidia, whose CEO, Jensen Huang, said during a May interview with CNBC this year that he had “no expectation” that Beijing would approve sales of its advanced AI chips in the country.

“The demand in China is quite large. Huawei is very, very strong. They had a record year, they’ll likely, very likely, have an extraordinary year coming up, and their local ecosystem of chip companies are doing quite well, because we’ve evacuated that market. We’ve really largely conceded that market to them,” Huang said.

He said that Nvidia told investors to “expect nothing” regarding approvals from China, but added that the company would be more than delighted to serve the market.

H200 Is Not NVDA’s Latest Chip

The H200 is no longer Nvidia's newest AI accelerator. The company has launched its Blackwell generation of AI chips, including the Nvidia GB200 NVL72 and newer Blackwell-based systems, which offer substantially higher performance for training and inference than the Hopper-based H200.

However, the H200 remains one of Nvidia's most capable AI chips available for large-scale model training. Built on the Hopper architecture, it features significantly more high-bandwidth memory than the H100, making it well suited for memory-intensive AI workloads and large language models.

What Retail Traders Think Of NVDA Stock

Retail sentiment on Stocktwits around Nvidia trended in ‘bearish’ territory at the time of writing.

NVDA stock is up 7% year-to-date and 24% over the past 12 months. The S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is up 20% over the past 12 months, while the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) is up 28%.

The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF (VTI) and the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) are up 20% during this period.

Also See: Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas Says SPCX Will Need To Raise About $700B In Debt To Achieve Its $22.7 Trillion TAM Ambitions

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