Nvidia's China Hold-Up
- Nvidia has not yet sold any H200 AI chips into China despite U.S. export approval, company-level sales remain zero. - Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reported the lack of sales is due to Chinese firms struggling to obtain Beijing's permission. - The delay shows advanced-chip flows are being constrained by both U.S. export policy and Chinese industrial approvals, complicating market planning (reuters.com).
Nvidia still has not shipped any H200 artificial-intelligence chips into China, even after Washington cleared the sales in January. (money.usnews.com) U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on April 22 that Chinese companies have been unable to get permission from Beijing, leaving company-level sales at zero. Reuters reported the comment from Washington and said the hold-up is now on the Chinese side, not the U.S. export side. (money.usnews.com) The H200 is one of Nvidia’s most powerful chips for training and running artificial-intelligence systems in data centers. It sits below Nvidia’s top-end products, but it is still advanced enough that U.S. export policy has treated it as a sensitive item for China. (bis.gov) That policy changed on January 13, 2026, when the Bureau of Industry and Security moved H200 exports to China from a presumption of denial to case-by-case review. The rule also covered AMD’s MI325X and required exporters to show adequate U.S. supply, security procedures at the recipient, and third-party testing in the United States. (bis.gov) (federalregister.gov) China had been weighing its own approvals at the same time. Reuters reported on March 18 that Beijing had approved Nvidia’s H200 sales to China, after months in which Chinese authorities had been the main barrier despite strong customer demand and U.S. approval for exports. (rappler.com) The mismatch between March reports of Beijing’s approval and Lutnick’s April 22 statement suggests the practical bottleneck is narrower than a headline green light. A central approval may exist, but individual buyers still appear to be struggling to complete the process needed to import the chips. (rappler.com) (money.usnews.com) China matters to Nvidia because the country was once a meaningful slice of its business. Reuters reported in March that China had previously generated about 13% of Nvidia’s total revenue. (rappler.com) The delay also leaves Chinese cloud and internet groups waiting for hardware they want for artificial-intelligence training. South China Morning Post reported in January that more than 400,000 H200 chips were being lined up for companies including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent as Beijing balanced AI demand against its push for domestic self-reliance. (scmp.com) For now, the H200 is approved on paper in the United States, reportedly cleared in principle in China, and still absent from Chinese customers’ server racks. (money.usnews.com) (bis.gov)
