❯ NVIDIA H200 First Shipments Reach China; ByteDance and Tencent Each Get Roughly 10,000 Chips

CLEAREDBeijing has in recent weeks cleared ByteDance and Tencent to import roughly 10,000 NVIDIA H200 chips each, according to the Financial Times, marking the first time the model has actually arrived on the Chinese mainland. US licenses permit H200 sales to the mainland and Hong Kong, but Beijing reviews each transaction individually, with every order requiring sign-off from the National Development and Reform Commission.

CONDITIONALThere’s a catch that takes the edge off the loosening: Beijing is reportedly requiring companies to keep most of the H200s in Hong Kong rather than moving them to the mainland, on the grounds of giving domestic chips room to grow — compute can be bought, but it must not crowd out orders for the local supply chain. And since Hong Kong lacks the supporting data-center power, this batch of cards is unlikely to actually run at scale anytime soon.

LONGER LISTMore than two companies have approval. Reuters previously reported that ten firms — including ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent — were cleared to purchase, with a per-company ceiling of up to 100,000 chips. For now, these 10,000 chips are just the first step in approvals finally turning into actual deliveries, after months of gridlock.

SQUEEZEBoth sides are pressing the gas and the brake at once: the US has opened up sales, China has restricted deployment, and NVIDIA finds itself with a market where it can sign orders but struggles to deliver. Chinese cloud vendors, meanwhile, are having to rework their training plans — between buying chips and actually using them now sits the Shenzhen River, and whether the next batch of licenses gets approved will directly determine how their compute budgets for next year are written.

▪ SIGNALChip access is no longer decided by Washington alone — Beijing is also picking what gets in and what stays out.