Catenaa, Thursday, May 14, 2026- The US has cleared around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s second-most powerful AI chip, the H200, despite no delivery being made yet.
Reuters reported that CEO Jensen Huang, who was not initially listed in a White House delegation to Beijing, joined the trip after an invitation from President Donald Trump.
Trump picked him up in Alaska en route to a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, raising hopes the trip could finally unlock stalled efforts to sell the H200 chips in China.
Nvidia stock surged by 4% to a record high on Thursday on the news, while the company surpassed a $5.5 trillion market cap.
The stakes are significant, highlighting how the US-China tech rivalry is now snarling even approved trade, leaving the world’s most valuable company and dominant chipmaker caught between dueling national priorities.
Before US export curbs tightened, Nvidia commanded about 95% of China’s advanced chip market. China once accounted for 13% of its revenue, and Huang has previously estimated the country’s AI market alone would be worth $50 billion this year.
The US Commerce Department has approved around 10 Chinese companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com, to purchase Nvidia’s H200 chips, the report said.
A handful of distributors, including Lenovo and Foxconn, have also been approved. Buyers are permitted to purchase either directly from Nvidia or through those intermediaries and each approved customer can purchase up to 75,000 chips under the US licensing terms, the report said.
The identities of the approved buyers and the nature of their relationships with Nvidia and the authorized distributors involving the coveted AI chip have not been previously reported.
Huang told state broadcaster CCTV on Thursday that he hoped Trump and Xi would build on their good relationship during talks in Beijing to improve two-way ties.
Despite US approval, deals have stalled, as Chinese firms pulled back after guidance from Beijing, one source said.
The shift in China was partly triggered by changes on the US side, though exactly what changed remains unclear, the person added.
In Beijing, pressure is mounting to block or tightly vet the orders, the report said.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick echoed that view, telling a Senate hearing last month that “the Chinese central government has not let them, as of yet, buy the chips, because they’re trying to keep their investment focused on their own domestic industry.”
Beijing’s hesitation reflects a strategic calculation, as it fears imports could weaken a push to develop homegrown AI chips. While China’s AI chips still lag Nvidia, firms like DeepSeek increasingly tout their reliance on domestic chips, including those developed by Huawei.
Their pivot to Huawei underscores Nvidia’s precarious position in China. Huang has warned that US export controls are eroding the company’s foothold in the market, saying its share of AI accelerators in China has effectively fallen to zero.
The path to a completed sale has been obstructed by a tangle of requirements on both sides. US rules issued in January require Chinese buyers to demonstrate they had installed “sufficient security procedures” and would not use the chips for military purposes.
Nvidia must also certify sufficient inventory in the United States.
Trump negotiated an arrangement under which the US would receive 25% of the revenue from the chip sales, a structure that requires the chips to pass through US territory before being shipped to China, as US law does not permit the direct imposition of export fees.
