The U.S. Commerce Department has approved around 10 Chinese companies—including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com—along with distributors such as Lenovo and Foxconn, to purchase Nvidia’s H200 AI chips under licensing arrangements allowing up to 75,000 chips per customer. Despite the approvals, no shipments have been completed so far. Sources say Chinese firms have pulled back after informal guidance from Beijing and rising government scrutiny over reliance on foreign AI hardware, as China a

The U.S. Commerce Department has approved around 10 Chinese companies—including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com—along with distributors such as Lenovo and Foxconn, to purchase Nvidia’s H200 AI chips under licensing arrangements allowing up to 75,000 chips per customer. Despite the approvals, no shipments have been completed so far. Sources say Chinese firms have pulled back after informal guidance from Beijing and rising government scrutiny over reliance on foreign AI hardware, as China accelerates efforts to promote domestic chip alternatives like Huawei. The stalled rollout underscores ongoing U.S.-China tech tensions, even as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang joins a U.S. delegation to Beijing in an effort to advance the deal and restore chip exports to China.