Nvidia is going back to China
Nvidia is restarting H200 chip sales in China, after Beijing's approval cleared the last hurdle for a chip that once generated 13% of Nvidia's revenue
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Nvidia $NVDA has received purchase orders from Chinese customers for its H200 processors and is restarting production, CEO Jensen Huang said this week — marking the first concrete movement toward resuming chip sales to China after months of regulatory maneuvering in both the U.S. and China.
"We have received purchase orders, and we're in the process of restarting our manufacturing," Huang told reporters at the company's GTC conference in San Jose, according to CNBC. "Our supply chain is getting fired up." Huang said Nvidia now has regulatory clearance from both the U.S. and China.
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The sticking point had been China's side of the approval process, according to Reuters. U.S. export licenses were in place, but Beijing had held back from clearing imports. An SEC filing from Nvidia last month disclosed that the U.S. had issued a license in February covering limited H200 shipments to specific Chinese buyers. A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that China has now issued licenses for many customers. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said they were "not aware of the specifics."
The H200 is Nvidia's second-most powerful AI chip. It sits below the company's current-generation Blackwell line, which remains off-limits for export to China under the terms of the arrangement. Export licenses come with conditions: The U.S. takes 25% of chip sale proceeds, shipments are capped, and sales must go through third-party verification, according to CNBC.
Before export controls took hold, China was responsible for roughly 13% of Nvidia's total revenue and generated at least a fifth of its data center business. In its most recent earnings guidance, Nvidia assumed zero data center revenue from China — meaning any resumed sales would represent additional upside, according to CNBC.
Huang had previously said the company was "100% out of China" and had been lobbying Washington to find a path back. The H200 export framework emerged earlier this year as a compromise between a full ban and unrestricted access to Nvidia's most advanced hardware. In January, Reuters reported that China had granted preliminary approval to ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba, and AI startup DeepSeek to import the chips.
A separate prior attempt to revive Nvidia's China business — through a lower-capability H20 chip — stalled after Beijing signaled that state-linked firms should favor domestic alternatives.