Catenaa, Thursday, January 08, 2026- Nvidia is requiring full upfront payment from Chinese customers seeking its H200 AI chips, hedging it against ongoing uncertainty over Beijing’s approval of the shipments.
Quoting sources, Reuters said that the US chipmaker has imposed unusually stringent terms requiring full payment for orders with no options to cancel, ask for refunds, or change configurations after placement.
In special circumstances, clients may provide commercial insurance or asset collateral as an alternative to cash payment, the report said.
Nvidia standard terms for Chinese clients have previously included advance payment requirements, but they were sometimes allowed to place a deposit rather than make a full payment up front.
But for the H200, the company has been particularly strict in enforcing conditions, given the lack of clarity on whether Chinese regulators would greenlight the shipments.
Chinese technology companies have placed orders for more than 2 million H200 chips that are priced at around $27,000 each, Reuters reported last month, exceeding Nvidia’s inventory of 700,000 of the chips.
While Chinese chipmakers like Huawei have developed AI processors, including the Ascend 910C, their performance still lags behind Nvidia’s H200 for large-scale training of advanced AI models.
China plans to approve some H200 imports as soon as this quarter, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
Chinese officials are preparing to allow purchases for select commercial uses, while barring the military, sensitive government agencies, critical infrastructure, and state-owned enterprises due to security concerns, the report said.
Beijing, in recent days, asked some Chinese tech companies to temporarily pause their H200 chip orders as regulators are still deciding how many domestically produced chips each customer will need to buy alongside each H200 order.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Tuesday that customer demand for H200 chips was “quite high” and that the company has “fired up our supply chain” to ramp up production.
