Overview
- Nvidia has informed Chinese customers it could begin delivering H200 chips before mid-February, with initial batches drawn from existing inventory totaling an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 modules.
- Any sales remain subject to U.S. export licenses under an ongoing interagency review involving Commerce, State, Energy, and Defense.
- Beijing has yet to authorize imports, and officials are weighing conditions such as requiring buyers to bundle each purchase with a set ratio of domestic processors.
- President Trump reversed a Biden-era prohibition to allow limited H200 exports to approved customers and has proposed a 25 percent fee on these sales.
- National-security critics warn the chips could reach China’s military under military–civil fusion and point to enforcement gaps, including prior offshore access and the rollback of the Biden AI Diffusion rule.