China’s Nvidia H200 stockpile grows as bulk imports stall

China’s potential approvals of Nvidia H200 AI processors could amount to fewer than 200,000 chips, The Information reported in July. A stockpile whose size has not previously been reported has meanwhile built up in Hong Kong.

The July report identified Alibaba, ByteDance and DeepSeek as firms that could receive permission for limited purchases of the AI processors.

Shipments have nevertheless reached Chinese buyers. Several major Chinese internet companies each obtained about 10,000 H200 chips over the past few months, one person familiar with the matter said.

Three people said “small quantities of chips had been shipped via intermediaries and indirect routes,” without specifying how many. China allowed some chips into the country in recent months, but Beijing has yet to approve large-volume imports into mainland China.

The split matters. Chinese companies need Nvidia’s advanced computing power to meet surging AI demand in the world’s second-largest economy, yet Beijing remains reluctant to increase reliance on U.S. technology.

What can the H200 do that Chinese alternatives cannot?

The H200 is not Nvidia’s newest AI processor. It remains useful because its capabilities have not yet been matched by Chinese alternatives, particularly for training models when combined with Nvidia’s software.

That software advantage matters as Washington has narrowed the hardware boundary. U.S. export controls since 2022 have sought to restrict China’s access to advanced Nvidia chips and the equipment needed to make them.

Authorized supply remained constrained, so Chinese buyers turned to intermediaries and indirect routes, pushing up prices in the unofficial market.

Why did an eight-card H200 server triple in price?

One person familiar with the matter said sellers offered an eight-card H200 server for “more than 6 million yuan ($900,000)” in mainland China by the end of October, about three times its price a year earlier.

The same person said sellers offered servers using Nvidia’s newer Blackwell chips for more than 20 million yuan apiece; those chips also fall under U.S. export controls.

What changed between Washington and Beijing?

The United States initially barred exports of the H200 to China. President Donald Trump’s administration then gave Nvidia permission to sell the chips to approved Chinese customers, a policy shift that followed U.S.-China trade negotiations and occurred last year.

According to the account, Beijing imposed its own import constraints because of concerns about dependence on U.S. technology. The H200 now sits at the center of broader trade-and-technology tension between Washington and Beijing.

Which buyers may get access?

In July, The Information reported that Chinese officials had told Alibaba, ByteDance and DeepSeek they could receive permission to buy limited quantities of H200 chips for training AI models. The report said total approvals could amount to fewer than 200,000 chips.

The Information also reported that Beijing wanted companies to prioritize Chinese processors for inference, the task of running AI models. That preference points toward a split workload: Nvidia systems for training and domestic chips for inference.

Why did buyers order 3 million export-compliant GPUs?

Reuters reported last month that ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent ordered more than 3 million Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 graphics cards, a less powerful, export-compliant product, with a combined sticker price exceeding $35 billion.

The 3 million-card order shows that restricted H200 access has not stopped Chinese companies from buying other Nvidia products, though Reuters did not specify how the cards will be deployed.

Neither China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology nor the National Development and Reform Commission responded to requests for comment. Nvidia, Alibaba, ByteDance, DeepSeek and Tencent also did not respond.

The commercial test now sits with Beijing: whether it authorizes a large-volume H200 shipment beyond the reported sub-200,000 approval level. Narrow official access would leave intermediaries and elevated prices central; broader approvals would add authorized supply to a market where an eight-card server already exceeds 6 million yuan.