Nvidia gets Beijing approval for H200 chip sale, replaces China’s Groq chip, sources say
By Karen Freifeld, Max A. Cherney and Liam Mo
NEW YORK, March 17 (Reuters) – Nvidia has won Beijing’s approval to sell its second-generation artificial intelligence chips to China and is preparing a Groq AI chip for sale in the Chinese market, sources familiar with the matter said.
The long-awaited regulatory approval paves the way for the American chipmaker to resume sales of H200 chips, which have emerged as a major sticking point in US-China relations, in a market that once generated 13% of Nvidia’s total revenue.
Despite strong demand from Chinese firms and US approval of exports, Beijing’s reluctance to allow imports has been a major obstacle to the export of H200 chips to China.
Earlier on Tuesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said it had been licensed to “many customers in China” for the H200 and had received purchase orders from “many” companies, allowing it to resume chip production.
“Our supply chain is ending,” Huang said at a press conference.
The company had halted chip production last year due to increasing regulatory hurdles in the US and China, according to a report at the time.
Nvidia had been waiting for licenses from the US and China for months. It has received some US approvals, and a source familiar with the matter said the company has also received licenses for several Chinese customers from Beijing.
A spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington said they were “not aware of the specifics,” and directed questions to “competent authorities.”
CNBC also reported on Tuesday that Huang told them the company now has approval from the US and China.
A source at the Chinese company said they did not know if the Chinese government had given final approval, but Nvidia told them they could now place purchase orders.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission late last month, Nvidia said the US granted a license in February that would allow “a small number of H200 products to certain customers in China.”
In January, Reuters reported that China had given preliminary approval to its three biggest tech companies – ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba – and AI startup DeepSeek to import chips, although regulatory conditions for China’s approval were still being finalized.
The Chinese companies did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.
Huang’s comments on AI agent OpenClaw, which has seen rapid adoption in China, helped push some Chinese AI stocks to record highs on Wednesday.
Shares of major language modeling startups MiniMax and Zhipu AI rose more than 19% each after Huang said OpenClaw is “definitely the next ChatGPT.”
NVIDIA READIES GROQ CHIP FROM CHINA
Nvidia is also preparing a version of its Groq AI chip that could be sold in the Chinese market, Reuters reported earlier on Tuesday, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
It plans to tap Groq chips into what is known as inference, where AI systems answer questions, write code or perform tasks for users. In the products shown by Nvidia this week, the company plans to use its upcoming Vera Rubin chips, which will not be sold in China, combined with Groq chips.
While Nvidia dominates the market for training AI systems, it faces a lot of competition in the index market. Several large Chinese firms, including AI heavyweights such as Baidu, are already producing their own chips.
The chips being prepared for China are not downgraded versions or made for the Chinese market, one of the sources told Reuters. But the new variant could be adapted to work with other systems, the source said, adding that the Groq chip is expected to be available in May.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld, Stephen Nellis, Max A. Cherney and Liam Mo; Editing by Chris Sanders, Miyoung Kim and Kevin Buckland)
