About 600,000 of Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence chips are stored in Hong Kong awaiting shipment to China, two people familiar with the matter said, as Beijing withholds approval for large-scale imports despite demand from technology firms.
The size of the stockpile of H200 chips, which has not previously been reported, reflects Beijing’s reluctance to increase reliance on US technology. At the same time, Chinese companies need Nvidia’s advanced computing power to meet surging AI demand in the world’s second-largest economy.
China has allowed some of the chips to enter the country in recent months, three people familiar with the matter said. Several major Chinese internet companies have each obtained about 10,000 H200 chips in the past few months, one of the people said.
Three people said small quantities of chips had been shipped via intermediaries and indirect routes without specifying how many.
But Beijing has yet to approve large-volume imports into China, the people said.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did Nvidia or Chinese tech companies Alibaba, ByteDance, DeepSeek and Tencent.
H200 IS NOT THE MOST ADVANCED BUT VERY USEFUL
The H200 is not Nvidia’s newest AI processor, but it has capabilities that Chinese alternatives have yet to match, making it useful for training AI models particularly when combined with Nvidia’s software.
