The US government approved around 10 Chinese companies to buy Nvidia H200 AI chips, but not a single chip has been delivered, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters.
Companies including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com got approval from the US Commerce Department to purchase up to 75,000 H200 chips each. Distributors like Lenovo and Foxconn also received approval to resell the chips.
Despite that, Chinese firms pulled back after guidance from Beijing, one of the three sources said. China's government had quietly told domestic tech companies to pause H200 orders as the country pushes to build its own AI chip industry with companies like Huawei and DeepSeek.
Huang wasn't on the Beijing trip until Trump called him
That deadlock is why Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is in Beijing today. He wasn't originally on President Donald Trump's delegation list to Beijing this week. But after media coverage of his absence, Trump called Huang directly and invited him to join, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC.
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