Nvidia reportedly weighs ramping up H200 production to meet surging demand in China

Nvidia is reportedly considering increasing production of its H200 chips after securing approval from the Trump administration to sell the processors in China, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources.

The H200 — the most powerful GPU from Nvidia’s previous Hopper generation, designed for training large language models — had previously been off-limits in China due to restrictions proposed by the former Biden administration that barred the sale of advanced AI chips to the country. However, the U.S. Department of Commerce permitted Nvidia last week to sell the H200 in China, in exchange for the government receiving a 25% share of the chips’ revenue.

According to the report, Chinese companies have quickly placed large orders, prompting Nvidia to evaluate whether to expand capacity. At the same time, Chinese regulators are still weighing whether to allow imports of H200 chips, which are said to be significantly more powerful than Nvidia’s H20 GPUs—the customised chips the company had been selling in China under previous restrictions.

For Nvidia, scaling up production of the H200 could unlock pent-up demand in a market racing to build its own domestic AI hardware. Constraints driven by geopolitical tensions and national security concerns have limited China’s access to the most advanced AI computing systems, prompting local companies to prioritise efficiency over raw compute power.

Major Chinese tech firms, including Alibaba and ByteDance — both developing their own AI models — have already contacted Nvidia to discuss potential large-scale orders for the H200, which is currently being produced in limited volumes, Reuters noted.

“We are managing our supply chain to ensure that licensed sales of the H200 to authorized customers in China will have no impact on our ability to supply customers in the United States,” an Nvidia spokesperson said in an emailed statement.