Nvidia resumes H200 shipments to China: limited restart under US rules

Nvidia has started shipping limited numbers of its H200 chips to China again, after months of disruption caused by tighter US export controls.

The H200s now reaching Chinese customers are modified versions built to comply with US rules. Even so, sales to companies such as ByteDance and Tencent still need approval on a case-by-case basis, and most of the chips that do get approved have to run outside mainland China in Hong Kong, where both space and power are in short supply.

By Nvidia’s own numbers, China still makes up less than 1% of its $89 billion in second-quarter data-centre revenue. Its $108 billion outlook for the third quarter also assumes China won’t add much on the data-centre side, even with demand staying strong elsewhere.

If you follow Nvidia as an investor, this matters. It doesn’t really change the company’s growth story right now.

The bigger thing to watch is what these export controls are setting in motion. They’re giving China more reason to lean on domestic accelerators from companies like Huawei, while Europe is pushing its own plan for up to seven sovereign-compute gigafactories across 16 EU states under a €30 billion program that could still be slowed by funding problems, energy costs, and continued reliance on US cloud platforms.

The Nvidia H200 is available in China only within tight US licensing limits, and actual deployment remains largely outside the mainland.