China has ordered Alibaba and other tech companies to prepare orders for Nvidia chips

Chinese officials have notified China's largest technology companies, including Alibaba Group, that they can start preparing orders for Nvidia H200 chips. Several sources familiar with the situation told Bloomberg.

According to them, Chinese regulators have granted such companies as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance in-principle approval to move to the next stage of preparation for the purchase of Nvidia chips. In particular, they are allowed to discuss specific details of deliveries, such as the required volumes, the agency's interlocutors noted.

Such moves by Chinese officials indicate that Beijing is close to officially approving the import of Nvidia chips into the country, Bloomberg writes, noting that as one of the conditions of this approval, Beijing will also encourage Chinese companies to buy some Chinese AI chips alongside Nvidia chips.

Information about Beijing's instructions to major technology companies to start preparing orders for Nvidia H200 chips contradicts reports that have appeared in recent weeks. In particular, Reuters sources reported on January 14 that Chinese customs authorities announced that Nvidia H200 AI chips "are not allowed to be imported into the country" - this "effectively meant a ban on importing Nvidia H200 AI chips" into China, one of the agency's interlocutors noted. Following this, on January 16, the Financial Times (FT) reported that after China blocked shipments, suppliers of components for Nvidia H200 chips suspended production. Nvidia, as the FT pointed out, was expecting more than 1 million orders from Chinese customers.

Nvidia representatives refused to comment on the new data from Bloomberg's interlocutors. Representatives of Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance did not respond to the agency's requests.

At the beginning of the trading day on January 23, Nvidia securities added 1.72%. American depositary receipts Alibaba traded in the negative by 2.43%. Tencent shares lost 0.42% in Hong Kong on Friday, January 23.

The H200 chip, Nvidia's second most powerful AI chip, is a major point of contention in the current US-China relationship, Reuters notes: despite strong demand from Chinese companies, it remains unclear whether the Chinese government will allow the technology into the local market or ban it to favor Chinese chipmakers.

H200 exports to China were finally approved by US President Donald Trump's administration last week. Under the updated terms, shipments of chips to China will only be possible after verification by an independent lab. In addition, Nvidia will be required to confirm sufficient availability of the chips in the U.S. and Chinese buyers will be required to guarantee their non-military use.

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