ByteDance and Alibaba Already Want Nvidia’s H200 Chips After Trump Exports Approval
Trump's export green light just lit a fire under China's tech giants.
ByteDance and Alibaba are reportedly first in line for Nvidia's H200 chips. The move signals a massive AI infrastructure push, with companies scrambling to secure compute power before the geopolitical winds shift again.
The Rush for Silicon
This isn't about building a better social media algorithm or a faster checkout. It's about raw computational dominance. The H200 represents the bleeding edge of AI training hardware, and access to it could accelerate China's generative AI capabilities by years. Analysts note the orders likely represent billions in committed spend—a bet that AI revenue will eventually justify the capex. Wall Street, of course, is already trying to price in the 'AI compute scarcity premium' into cloud stocks.
A Calculated Gambit
The approval bypasses previous strict export controls, creating a narrow window for Chinese firms to stockpile. It's a strategic play: lock in the hardware now, build the models later. The risk? Another policy reversal could strand these chips as expensive, isolated assets. But for ByteDance and Alibaba, the cost of falling behind in the global AI race is deemed far greater.
The new rules of engagement are simple: get the chips, build the moat, and let the future worry about the balance sheet—a classic tech move that would give any traditional CFO heart palpitations.
Chinese regulators assess demand for H200
Before TRUMP cleared the H200 for export, the most powerful AI chip China could legally receive was the H20. That chip runs at a far lower level.
Data shows the H200 delivers nearly six times the performance of the H20. That performance gap explains the sudden buying pressure. It also explains why Chinese regulators moved fast after the U.S. decision.
The Information reported that regulators called in representatives from Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent Holdings earlier this week. Officials asked each company to assess how many H200 chips they WOULD want to buy. The talks focused on real demand. Not marketing numbers. Not long-term dreams. Officials told firms they would communicate Beijing’s final decision soon, according to people cited by The Information.
So far, the Chinese government has not given a formal answer to Trump’s announcement. This delay matters.
In recent months, Beijing blocked state-backed data centers and major tech firms from buying Nvidia AI chips, stripping the company of large chunks of market share inside China. The restrictions hit cloud units, AI labs, and enterprise buyers hard.
H200 supply remains thin. Two people familiar with Nvidia’s production chain said only limited quantities are being made right now. Nvidia has focused most of its factory output on its Blackwell platform and the upcoming Rubin line.
Those chips target the most advanced AI users outside China. That production choice leaves the H200 in short supply at the exact moment global demand spikes.
Beijing reviews H200 use cases and risks
Even with Trump’s approval, Chinese buyers expect strict oversight. People briefed on the talks said authorities will likely require each company to submit detailed use cases before approving purchases.
Beijing is weighing the trade-off. It wants advanced AI hardware. It also wants to push domestic chipmakers like Huawei and Cambricon.
Sources said Chinese firms prefer the H200 because local alternatives still struggle with model training. Domestic chips work better for inference, not heavy training work.
Elite universities. Large data center groups. Organizations linked to the Chinese military. All of them have already tried to source the H200 through grey-market channels, according to a review covering more than 100 tenders and academic papers. Before Trump’s policy shift, any seller shipping H200 units to China faced violations under U.S. federal law tied to AI chip performance limits.
The policy change created an odd legal gap. Older Nvidia chips like the A100 and H100, two of the most common models inside China, still fall under U.S. export controls. The more powerful H200, for now, does not. That mismatch adds urgency to current talks.
Zhang Yuchun, general manager at Chinese cloud provider SuperCloud, described the AI situation clearly. “The training of leading Chinese AI models still relies on Nvidia cards,” Zhang said. “I expect the leading Chinese tech companies to buy a lot although in a low-key manner.”
Chinese firms expect purchases to stay quiet even if approval arrives. They want to avoid public clashes with regulators. They also want to avoid sending signals that could trigger fresh export limits from Washington.
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