Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 1.64% ) plans to begin shipping between 40,000 and 80,000 of its high-end H200 AI chips to China by mid-February, according to Reuters, timing deliveries just ahead of the Lunar New Year on February 17. Shares rose nearly 2 percent in premarket trading on the news, as investors digested the reopening of a critical end market.
Why this matters for Nvidia
The H200 is Nvidia’s most powerful chip from its Hopper generation, sitting just below its newer Blackwell lineup. Unlike the cut-down H20 chips previously approved for China, the H200 offers meaningfully higher performance, especially for large-scale AI training and inference. That performance gap makes the chips far more attractive to Chinese buyers and more impactful for Nvidia’s revenue mix.
Earlier this month, President Trump said Nvidia could resume certain chip sales to China, with 25 percent of proceeds directed to the US government. While the move has drawn bipartisan criticism in Congress, it gives Nvidia a clearer path to monetize demand that had been largely sidelined by export restrictions.
What could still slow things down
Chinese regulators have not yet approved the purchases, and prior reporting suggests buyers may need to demonstrate why domestic alternatives cannot meet their needs. Given the widely acknowledged gap between Nvidia’s H200 and China’s top locally produced AI chips, analysts say that requirement may not be a major obstacle.
Reuters also reported that Nvidia is considering increasing H200 production due to strong demand, with new order capacity potentially opening in the second quarter.
The bigger picture
Wall Street largely wrote off a China rebound after restrictions on Nvidia’s H20 chips were lifted, and that skepticism proved warranted. The H200, however, is a different story. If approvals come through, these shipments could mark a more meaningful reopening of Nvidia’s China business, even as the company pushes forward with Blackwell elsewhere.