ByteDance and Alibaba have approached Nvidia about ordering large quantities of its H200 AI chips following President Donald Trump’s decision to allow the model to be exported to China. The companies are eager to secure access to the processor which is nearly six times more powerful than the currently permitted H20. Yet, companies remain cautious as Beijing has not yet officially approved imports.
For months, Chinese regulators have barred state-linked data centers and major tech firms from purchasing Nvidia GPUs. Officials recently convened leading technology companies, including Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent, to assess their demand for the H200 and signaled that a decision on authorization is forthcoming.
Despite the interest, availability remains extremely limited. Nvidia has prioritized production of its most advanced Blackwell and upcoming Rubin chips, leaving only small quantities of H200 units in circulation. Chinese firms, however, view the H200 as unmatched for training frontier AI models, a task domestic chips are still less capable of handling.
The policy shift has created an unusual contradiction. Older Nvidia processors such as the A100 and H100 remain under U.S. export restrictions, while the more powerful H200 is now permissible. Even so, companies expect Chinese authorities to review purchase requests carefully. Balancing the need for cutting-edge hardware with Beijing’s aim of strengthening homegrown semiconductor champions like Huawei and Cambricon.
With elite universities, military-affiliated research groups, and data-center operators already attempting to source H200 chips through gray-market channels, demand is poised to surge if formal approval arrives. As one cloud-service executive noted, China’s leading AI developers still depend heavily on Nvidia’s hardware and major firms are likely to buy aggressively.
Reference
Wang, A. (2025, December 11). ByteDance, Alibaba keen to order Nvidia H200 Chips. Taipei Times. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2025/12/11/2003848662