US Clears H200 Chip Sales To 10 China Firms
(Thursday May 14, 2026 @05:00PM (BeauHD)
from the latest-developments dept.)
- Reference: 0183216525
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/05/14/1656220/us-clears-h200-chip-sales-to-10-china-firms
- Source link:
Longtime Slashdot reader [1]schwit1 shares a report from CNBC:
> The U.S. has [2]cleared around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia's second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, but not a single delivery has been made so far, three people familiar with the matter said, leaving a major technology deal in limbo as CEO Jensen Huang seeks a breakthrough in China this week. [...] Before U.S. export curbs tightened, Nvidia commanded about 95% of China's advanced chip market. China once accounted for 13% of its revenue, and Huang has previously estimated the country's AI market alone would be worth $50 billion this year.
>
> The U.S. Commerce Department has approved around 10 Chinese companies including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com to purchase Nvidia's H200 chips, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. A handful of distributors including Lenovo and Foxconn have also been approved, they said. Buyers are permitted to purchase either directly from Nvidia or through those intermediaries and each approved customer can purchase up to 75,000 chips under the U.S. licensing terms, two of them said.
>
> Despite U.S. approval, deals have stalled, as Chinese firms pulled back after guidance from Beijing, one source said. The shift in China was partly triggered by changes on the U.S. side, though exactly what changed remains unclear, the person added. In Beijing, pressure is mounting to block or tightly vet the orders, a separate fourth source said. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick echoed that view, telling a Senate hearing last month that "the Chinese central government has not let them, as of yet, buy the chips, because they're trying to keep their investment focused on their own domestic industry."
[1] https://slashdot.org/~schwit1
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/14/us-clears-h200-chip-sales-to-10-china-firms-as-nvidia-ceo-looks-for-breakthrough.html
> The U.S. has [2]cleared around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia's second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, but not a single delivery has been made so far, three people familiar with the matter said, leaving a major technology deal in limbo as CEO Jensen Huang seeks a breakthrough in China this week. [...] Before U.S. export curbs tightened, Nvidia commanded about 95% of China's advanced chip market. China once accounted for 13% of its revenue, and Huang has previously estimated the country's AI market alone would be worth $50 billion this year.
>
> The U.S. Commerce Department has approved around 10 Chinese companies including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com to purchase Nvidia's H200 chips, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. A handful of distributors including Lenovo and Foxconn have also been approved, they said. Buyers are permitted to purchase either directly from Nvidia or through those intermediaries and each approved customer can purchase up to 75,000 chips under the U.S. licensing terms, two of them said.
>
> Despite U.S. approval, deals have stalled, as Chinese firms pulled back after guidance from Beijing, one source said. The shift in China was partly triggered by changes on the U.S. side, though exactly what changed remains unclear, the person added. In Beijing, pressure is mounting to block or tightly vet the orders, a separate fourth source said. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick echoed that view, telling a Senate hearing last month that "the Chinese central government has not let them, as of yet, buy the chips, because they're trying to keep their investment focused on their own domestic industry."
[1] https://slashdot.org/~schwit1
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/14/us-clears-h200-chip-sales-to-10-china-firms-as-nvidia-ceo-looks-for-breakthrough.html
Re: (Score:1)
by Dishevel ( 1105119 )
Warned?
China is big. China is aggressive. That said, China has zero ability to project its military any appreciable distance. The US in not threatened by China ... Yet.
Re: (Score:2)
by snowshovelboy ( 242280 )
bro, nobody cares. We can't even afford frozen chicken nuggets anymore. We got way bigger problems than some island on the other side of the world.
Let me guess... (Score:1)
by Jerrry ( 43027 )
Huang kissed Trump's ass...
Good but (Score:2)
by pele ( 151312 )
I clearly remember, like it was yesterday, China imposing an outright ban on Nvidia products.
What prompted this? (Score:2)
by stevenm86 ( 780116 )
I'm curious to know how much $DJT they needed to buy, and at what price, to warrant this kind of exemption? Had to believe this was purely due to industry pressure to explode into a hungry market
Money and lobbying talks (Score:3)
Nividia probably complained enough to get this pushed through, and the regulators/politicians got kickbacks. Just guessing
Re: (Score:2)
But I'm sure Xi would much rather throw money at building up local AI chip design and chip manufacturing.
Re: (Score:2)
But Xi still wants some samples of the American products to know where the Chinese products are in relative terms. The better to set higher targets.
Still wondering what sort of trap he'll spring on the YOB. The tricky part is that Xi can't pull too hard on the buffoon's strings or everyone will notice. Has to let the YOB think it's really his latest brilliant idea. Even though Xi has been rehearsing with the YOB's GAIvatar for weeks already...
Re: (Score:2)
Whether legally or illegally, China can easily get their hands on a few individual devices for research purposes; that's not what this is about.
This is about them not trusting US hardware anymore due to explicit demands to put tracking features in the GPUs ( [1]https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com] ). It also has the added bonus of boosting their domestic GPU/AI accelerator development, working towards being as independent from the US as possible.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/nvidia-builds-location-verification-tech-that-could-help-fight-chip-smuggling-2025-12-10/
Re: (Score:2)
No, this has to be about B2B transactions. The Chinese want it and the US wants to sell it. You would think that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google would push back so they could stay ahead with their models. It's worked for them so far, except when deepseek models started getting good.
Re: (Score:2)
Jensen Huang I believe is on the trip to China with Trump.
Along with Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Larry Fink and Stephen Schwarzman (Blackrock), Kelly Ortberg (Boeing), Brian Sikes (Cargill), Jane Fraser (Citi), Larry Culp (GE), David Solomon (Goldman Sachs), Sanjay Mehrotra (Micron) and Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm)
But hey we just had to elect Trump to stick it to hose dastardly elites!
This is why when you hear Republicans say anything about "the establishment" you can just assume they are lying and ignore anything th
Re: (Score:2)
It's absolutely partisan in that when someone says it they just mean "people who i disagree with politically". Empty populism and you just made my case for me.
Pure slopulism all the way down.
Re: (Score:2)
It's all partisan. If you don't see it then congrats, you're falling for it.
You're worried about eating bugs when you're already feasting on partisan slop. Keep feasting.
Re: (Score:2)
> the establishment is both parties.
As I said, slopulism all the way down. How do you not see?
"The Establishment" is different to left and right (Score:1)
> This is why when you hear Republicans say anything about "the establishment" you can just assume they are lying and ignore anything they have to say.
There is no lie here, your perception of the right is mistaken. The left thinks of the "establishment" as the "billionaires". The right thinks of the "establishment" as the "washington bureaucracy".
Re: (Score:2)
And as we've seen Republicans are happy to hop into bed with both of them so long as they politically align with them. It's devoid of principles.
"washington bureaucracy" just means "democrats". Just slopulism and you are happy to slurp it down.
Re: (Score:2)
How the fuck have people forgotten already (actually I know, it's because Trump flooded the zone so much no one can keep track of anything)... There's [1]an export tax on Nvidia chips of 25% [cnbc.com], which was [2]discussed late 2025 [taxpolicycenter.org], despite being illegal.
Who knows where that money will go, but I'm assuming it goes into the Trump swamp.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/14/trump-nvidia-h200-china-ai-chips.html
[2] https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/trouble-trumps-deal-nvidia-and-amd-its-export-tax