By Karen Freifeld, Max A. Cherney and Liam Mo
NEW YORK, March 17 (Reuters) – Nvidia has won Beijing’s approval to sell its second-most powerful artificial intelligence chips to China and is also preparing a version of the Groq AI chip that can be sold to the Chinese market, sources familiar with the matter said.
The long-awaited regulatory approval paves the way for the U.S. chipmaker to resume sales of the H200 chips, which have emerged as a major flashpoint in U.S.-China relations, in a market that once generated 13% of Nvidia’s total revenue.
Despite strong demand from Chinese firms and U.S. approval for exports, Beijing’s hesitation to allow imports has been the main barrier to shipments of the H200 chips to China.
Earlier on Tuesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that it had been licensed for “many customers in China” for the H200 and had received purchase orders from “many” companies, allowing it to resume production of the chip.
“Our supply chain is getting fired up,” Huang said at a press conference.
The company had halted production last year of the chip because of increasing regulatory hurdles in the U.S. and China, according to a report at the time.
Nvidia had been waiting for licenses from both the U.S. and China for months. It has received some U.S. approvals, and a source familiar with the matter said the company had now also received licenses for many customers in China from Beijing.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said they were “not aware of the specifics,” and directed questions to “the competent authorities.”
CNBC also reported on Tuesday that Huang told them the company now has clearance from both the U.S. and China.
A Chinese company source said that they did not know if the Chinese government had given final approval, but that Nvidia had told them that they could now place purchase orders.
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late last month, Nvidia said that the U.S. had granted a license in February that would allow “small amounts of H200 products to specific China-based customers.”
In January, Reuters reported that China granted preliminary approval to three of its largest tech companies – ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba – along with AI startup DeepSeek to import the chips, although the regulatory conditions for China’s approvals were still being finalized.
The Chinese companies did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.
Huang’s bullish comment on AI agent OpenClaw, which has experienced rapid adoption in China, helped propel some Chinese AI stocks to record highs on Wednesday.
Shares in large-language model upstarts MiniMax and Zhipu AI surged more than 19% each after Huang said OpenClaw was “definitely the next ChatGPT.”
NVIDIA READIES GROQ CHIP FOR CHINA
Nvidia is also preparing a version of the Groq AI chip that can be sold to the Chinese market, Reuters reported earlier on Tuesday, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
It plans to tap Groq chips for what is known as inference, where AI systems answer questions, write code or carry out tasks for users. In the products Nvidia showed this week, the company plans to use its forthcoming Vera Rubin chips, which cannot be sold in China, in combination with the Groq chips.
While Nvidia dominates the market for training AI systems, it faces much more competition in the inference market. Several major Chinese firms, including AI heavyweights such as Baidu, already produce their own inference chips.
The chips being readied for China are not downgraded versions or made specifically for the Chinese market, one of the sources told Reuters. But the new variant can be adapted to work with other systems, the source said, adding that the Groq chip is expected to be available in May.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld, Stephen Nellis, Max A. Cherney and Liam Mo; Editing by Chris Sanders, Miyoung Kim and Kevin Buckland)
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