NVIDIA H200 AI GPUs are now shipping to China and Hong Kong under approved U.S. export licenses. Jeffrey Kessler, Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, confirmed before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that only “very few” processors have reached customers so far. The deliveries mark the first official H200 shipments since U.S. export controls stopped sales of NVIDIA’s advanced AI accelerators to China.
The Commerce Department approved around 10 Chinese companies to purchase H200 accelerators earlier this year, but deliveries had not begun at the time. Kessler told lawmakers that shipments are now moving, and the department has provided Congress with a confidential list of H200 export license applications and their status.
Companies previously linked to the approvals include Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, JD.com, DeepSeek, ZTE, and several affiliated organizations. Earlier reports pointed to an initial allocation of around 75,000 H200 GPUs. More recent industry reports mention a possible increase to 200,000 units, although neither NVIDIA nor the U.S. government has confirmed that figure.
The H200 is built on NVIDIA’s Hopper architecture and remains the most powerful AI accelerator currently approved for export to eligible customers in China. Blackwell and Blackwell Ultra GPUs continue to fall under U.S. export restrictions and cannot be sold through official channels.
The latest approval follows several months of uncertainty for NVIDIA’s China business. The company previously developed the H20 accelerator to comply with earlier export rules, but production later stopped after tighter restrictions reduced its future in the market. During that period, many Chinese companies relied on unofficial supply channels to obtain high-end AI hardware.
During the same congressional hearing, Representative Gregory Meeks criticized the Commerce Department’s licensing policy, arguing that export controls should not become part of broader negotiations with China. Kessler defended the current approach and told lawmakers that additional regulations covering AI chips are still being prepared.
Also Read: AMD Reportedly Plans 10% Radeon GPU Price Increase in July
The H200 shipments restore an official supply route for approved Chinese customers, while current U.S. export rules continue to block sales of NVIDIA’s latest Blackwell-based AI accelerators in the region.
Source: X (Walter Bloomberg)
