Still, Nvidia wants the business because China is a huge market. The latest approvals came during Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to China this week, according to sources who spoke with Reuters on the condition of anonymity. Other Chinese firms are now waiting for their own approvals in future rounds, though Beijing is attaching conditions to the licenses that have not yet been finalized. One source told Reuters that the license terms were too restrictive and buyers had not yet turned their approvals into actual orders.
Beijing’s balancing act
The approval signals Beijing’s prioritization of its major Internet companies, which are spending billions of dollars to build data centers needed to develop AI services and compete with US rivals, including OpenAI. But regulators are also trying to nurture China’s domestic semiconductor industry, the South China Morning Post reported.
The first batch was expected to go to Big Tech companies in urgent need of the GPU, according to a source who spoke with that publication. However, access for state-backed firms, including telecom operators, was expected to stay tightly restricted.
Beijing has previously discouraged domestic technology companies from purchasing foreign chips unless absolutely needed, according to earlier Reuters reporting. One proposal authorities discussed in the past would require each H200 purchase to be bundled with a set ratio of domestic chips.
“Beijing’s approval of the H200 is driven by purely strategic motives,” Alex Capri, a senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore’s business school, told the South China Morning Post. “Ultimately, this decision is taken to further China’s indigenous capabilities and, by extension, the competitive capabilities of China tech.”
