Nvidia H200 China update

Nvidia still has not sold any H200 artificial intelligence chips into China, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told U.S. lawmakers on April 22. (scmp.com) Lutnick said at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that China had bought “zero” H200 chips “as of today,” even though Washington had allowed sales of that model. He also said the White House was trying to keep its “best chips” out of China. (scmp.com) The H200 is one rung below Nvidia’s top Blackwell chips and is built for training and running large artificial intelligence models. Nvidia says it was the first graphics processor to use HBM3E memory, a faster, denser type of stacked memory for handling bigger AI workloads. (nvidia.com) This is the second time in two months that a U.S. official has said no H200s had reached Chinese customers. On February 24, Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement David Peters told a House hearing that none had been sold “so far.” (usnews.com) The policy backdrop shifted last year when the Commerce Department rescinded the Biden administration’s Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Rule on May 13, 2025, before its May 15 compliance date. The department said it would replace that framework later and, in the meantime, strengthen other semiconductor controls. (bis.gov) That left Nvidia, Chinese cloud companies and server makers in a narrow channel: H200 sales were not flatly barred, but they were not flowing either. Lutnick said Beijing itself had held back purchases because Chinese leaders wanted investment to stay focused on domestic chipmakers. (scmp.com) Chinese demand has been visible despite the lack of shipments. In January, the South China Morning Post reported that Beijing had begun approving H200 imports and that more than 400,000 chips were being cleared for companies including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent. (scmp.com) Critics in Washington say even limited access would help China’s military and artificial intelligence sector. Senator Chris Coons challenged Lutnick at the hearing, and Representative Gregory Meeks separately accused the administration of weakening export-control enforcement. (scmp.com) Nvidia has been warning investors for years that U.S. export controls can cut into China sales, including sales to Hong Kong and Macau. In its annual report for the fiscal year ended January 25, 2026, the company said those rules remained a material risk to its business. (sec.gov) For now, the headline is simpler than the policy: a chip Washington has approved for China still is not shipping there. Until that changes, buyers cannot plan around supply they do not have, and Nvidia cannot book revenue it has not made. (scmp.com)