US approves 10 Chinese firms to buy NVIDIA H200 chip following Trump's visit

Following Donald Trump’s visit to China, the United States reportedly cleared 10 Chinese firms to purchase NVIDIA H200 AI chips. The US has also allowed a few Chinese companies to act as distributors for these chips within China.

US President Donald Trump is currently on a trip to China, accompanied by a large delegation of US business leaders and executives. Among them are Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook. While it was initially reported that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang would not join the trip, he later accompanied Trump amid NVIDIA's efforts to finalize sales of advanced AI chips to Chinese customers.

Reuters reported that up to 10 Chinese companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com, have received permission to acquire NVIDIA H200 AI chips. The H200 chips are modified, lower-tier versions of NVIDIA’s flagship AI accelerators, designed to comply with US export restrictions.

The US has also approved Lenovo and Foxconn as distributors, with each approved customer allowed to purchase up to 75,000 chips under the licensing terms, either directly from NVIDIA or through its authorized distributors in China.

While the US has given the green light for NVIDIA and Chinese companies to resume trade, no actual sales have been finalized yet. According to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Chinese firms now require additional government approval to purchase NVIDIA chips, and Beijing has so far refused to grant such permissions to local tech companies. Lutnick also stated that China is increasingly focusing on building up its domestic semiconductor industry.

NVIDIA, which previously held around 95% of China’s advanced AI chip market, is now facing growing competition from domestic players such as Huawei. Meanwhile, Chinese regulators have also increased scrutiny of NVIDIA, accusing the American chipmaker of engaging in anti-competitive practices and embedding kill switches in its chips sold in China.