Financial Times: China Allows Small Batch of Nvidia H200 Chips; ByteDance and Tencent Each Receive 10,000 Units

China has allowed limited imports of Nvidia's (NVDA-US) H200 graphics processing units (GPUs), helping China's leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies catch up with their U.S. peers.

According to the UK's Financial Times on Tuesday (18th), sources revealed that ByteDance and Tencent (00700-HK) have each received about 10,000 H200 processors in recent weeks, with a few other Chinese tech firms potentially soon gaining approval to import the same quantity.

The H200 lags at least two generations behind Nvidia's most advanced chips. Due to U.S. export controls, Chinese customers are prohibited from purchasing Nvidia's cutting-edge chips.

While the U.S. has approved individual Chinese companies to buy up to 100,000 H200 units, Beijing, aiming to foster domestic chipmakers, wants these firms to keep most of the H200s outside mainland China.

In addition to allowing small batches of H200s into China, regulators have informed companies they may deploy the relevant processors in Hong Kong. U.S.-issued licenses permit H200 shipments to both mainland China and Hong Kong.

However, Hong Kong's data centers lack sufficient capacity to absorb these chips. Due to power supply constraints, related capacity is unlikely to expand significantly in the short term.

Sources said Nvidia currently holds around 500,000 H200 units in inventory, primarily intended for Chinese customers, but sales have been hindered by Chinese government restrictions.

Some Nvidia partners, including Lenovo (03396-HK), last week notified Chinese customers that orders for products equipped with H200s could resume. These firms integrate Nvidia chips with central processing units (CPUs) and other networking equipment to build and sell AI servers.

Still, purchases require separate applications and must be reviewed by China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

Chinese regulators have recently begun easing restrictions on importing U.S. chips to ensure major AI developers can continue training advanced models. Sources say Chinese tech firms are striving to compete with advanced models such as Anthropic's Mythos 5.