{"id":434369,"date":"2026-01-28T07:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T07:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/434369\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T07:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T07:52:08","slug":"exclusive-china-approves-first-batch-of-nvidia-h200-chip-imports-sources-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/434369\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive-China approves first batch of Nvidia H200 chip imports, sources say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jan 28 (Reuters) – China has approved its first batch of Nvidia<\/a> H200 artificial intelligence<\/a> chip imports, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters, marking a shift in position as Beijing \u200bseeks to balance its AI needs against spurring domestic development.<\/p>\n

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have been approved to \u200cpurchase over 400,000 H200 chips in total, with other enterprises now joining a queue for subsequent approvals, said two of the sources, who \u200cspoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

It was granted during Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang’s visit to China this week, the sources said.<\/p>\n

China’s industry and commerce ministries as well as Nvidia had not yet responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent had not responded either.<\/p>\n

The H200, Nvidia’s second most powerful AI chip, has \u2060emerged as a major flashpoint in U.S.-China \u200crelations. Despite strong demand from Chinese firms and U.S. approval for exports, Beijing’s hesitation to allow imports has been the main barrier to shipments.<\/p>\n

The U.S. earlier this month formally \u200dcleared the way for Nvidia to sell the H200 to China, where the company is seeing strong appetite. However, Chinese authorities have the final say on whether they would allow it to be shipped in.<\/p>\n

It was unclear in recent weeks whether Beijing \u200bwould grant approval as the government wants to balance meeting surging domestic demand for advanced AI chips \u200cand nurturing its domestic semiconductor industry.<\/p>\n

Chinese customs authorities told agents that the H200 chips were not permitted to enter China, Reuters reported earlier this month.<\/p>\n

But Chinese technology firms have placed orders for more than two million H200 chips, far exceeding Nvidia’s available inventory, Reuters reported last month.<\/p>\n

It remains uncertain how many additional companies will receive approval in subsequent batches or what criteria Beijing is using to determine eligibility.<\/p>\n

Huang arrived in Shanghai last Friday for routine annual \u2060celebrations with Nvidia’s China employees and has since travelled to \u200bBeijing and other cities, Reuters reported last week.<\/p>\n

BALANCING ACT<\/p>\n

The approvals of \u200bH200 suggest Beijing is prioritising the needs of major Chinese internet companies, which are spending billions of dollars to build data centres needed to develop AI services and compete with U.S. \u200drivals, including OpenAI<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While Chinese companies \u2060such as Huawei now have products that rival the performance of Nvidia’s H20 chip, previously the most advanced AI chip it was allowed to sell to China, they still lag far behind the H200.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan 28 (Reuters) – China has approved its first batch of Nvidia H200 artificial intelligence chip imports, three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,550,144,205661,11379,4321,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-434369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-beijing","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-domestic-semiconductor-industry","14":"tag-jensen-huang","15":"tag-nvidia","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}