The Chinese government is reportedly holding “emergency meetings” with several Chinese tech giants to discuss and assess their demand for NVIDIA’s H200 AI accelerators. The timing of these meetings are understandable; they come after the US’ Trump administration gave the GPU brand the greenlight to sell its H200 GPUs to companies in China.
The meetings were convened by the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, two very powerful bodies in the CCP. The tech giants that it took meetings with include Tencent, ByteDance, and the Alibaba Group. The government bodies essentially asked them to assess their demand for the beefier AI chips, to which China currently has no alternative for.
Why Is This Happening?
Earlier this week, President Trump gave NVIDIA the nod to sell the company’s H200 AI Accelerators to China. The catch, however, was that the GPU brand gives 25% of all GPU sales to the US government. This marks the second time Trump has asked the GPU brand to provide what is basically a kickback for the government’s generosity. In August, it inked a deal with NVIDIA and other US chip manufacturers to give 15% of all its AI chips sales to China, back to the US government.
Before the approval, NVIDIA was given the go ahead to continue selling its H20 chips to China. You would think that China would be elated with this news, but alas, that isn’t the case. From perceived insults by the US government, to stoking fears of the H20 AI GPUs containing killswitches and backdoors – NVIDIA has categorically denied this accusation – sales of that GPU are not biting, with Beijing trying to sway its tech giants to increase their reliance on homegrown AI chips, mainly from Huawei.
Despite the pushback from Beijing, there is little the country can do about the prowess of NVIDIA’s H200 Accelerators. Launched in 2023, and despite being a step below Blackwell in the totem pole of AI acceleration, The Grace Hopper-powered GPU is still miles ahead in its capabilities to train AI models.
Beijing has told the companies it had meetings with that they would soon be informed of the government’s decision, once the two bodies compiled their responses. If it does authorise the importation of H200 chips, demand from the various companies will undoubtedly be substantial.
(Source: Tom’s Hardware via The Information)
