Beijing has granted permission for Chinese companies to buy Nvidia's latest H200 chips

Beijing has allowed shipments of the latest chips from US company Nvidia to Chinese customers for the first time since an initial ban. According to Reuters sources, Beijing has for the first time approved major imports of Nvidia H200 chips for ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, allowing the country's top IT giants to purchase more than 400,000 semiconductors. Another source said the approvals come with restrictions, with one of the conditions being a requirement to purchase a certain proportion of domestic chips in conjunction with the H200.

The approvals were granted during a visit by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to China last week, according to a Reuters interlocutor. Chinese authorities and the company refrained from official comment.

Chinese orders - more than 2 million H200 chips - markedly exceed Nvidia's available capacity, adding to the uncertainty, Reuters writes.

The H200 chip was unveiled by Nvidia at CES on January 5, 2026. According to the company's press release, the chip reduces the cost of generating responses by a factor of 10 compared to the previous Blackwell chip.

On January 14, the U.S. government formally authorized the sale of the chip to China, subject to strict conditions in the form of limiting exports to China to 50% relative to sales to U.S. customers and a 25% duty. On the same day, the Chinese Customs Service, according to Reuters sources, effectively banned the import of the chip into the country.

- Nvidia shares were up 1.9 percent in early trading in New York.

- Alibaba shares were adding 2.9 percent.

- Tencent earlier on Jan. 28 closed trading on the Hong Kong exchange up 2.3 percent.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor