China has approved the import of the first batch of H200, Nvidia’s (NVDA) second most powerful AI chip, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
ByteDance (BDNCE), Alibaba (BABA) and Tencent (TCEHY) have been cleared to buy over 400,000 H200 chips in total.
Other Chinese companies are reportedly joining a queue for subsequent approvals, but it’s unclear how many will be permitted to buy H200 chips.
Chinese tech firms placed orders for over 2M H200 chips, far exceeding Nvidia’s (NVDA) available inventory, Reuters reported last month.
The H200 approvals suggest Beijing is prioritizing local companies’ efforts to keep up with the U.S. in the AI race, even as it seeks to spur domestic chip development.
Chinese companies like Huawei have chips that rival Nvidia’s (NVDA) H20, but they still lag far behind the H200, which delivers about 6x the performance of the H20.