Nvidia plans to begin shipping H200 chips to China by mid-February, per Reuters

Chinese buyers can get their hands on the best chips from Nvidia’s Hopper generation before the new year — their Lunar New Year, that is, which starts on February 17.

Reuters reports that the chip designer has told customers in the world’s second-largest economy that it plans to ship about 40,000 to 80,000 H200 chips to China by mid-February, citing a trio of people familiar with the matter. Shares of Nvidia extended gains to be up nearly 2% in premarket trading on Monday, as of 8 a.m. ET.

Earlier this month, President Trump said that Nvidia could begin to sell these processors to China with 25% of the proceeds going to the US government. H200s are the top offering from Nvidia’s Hopper generation, which preceded its current Blackwell flagship products. Providing China with this high-powered US AI technology has been critiqued by both sides of the aisle in Congress.

The report also notes that Chinese authorities have yet to approve these purchases, and previous reporting from the Financial Times suggests potential buyers would need to show what the Nvidia chips can do that domestic chips can’t. Based on what experts say about the performance gap between H200s and the top Chinese processors, that might not be too difficult a hurdle to clear.

Reuters had previously indicated that Nvidia had told Chinese buyers it was considering boosting H200 production in light of firm demand. Monday’s report cites a source that says orders for this fresh capacity should open in Q2.

Analysts never gave Nvidia much credit for a potential recovery in H20 sales after the Trump administration lifted curbs on sending those chips to China (and wouldn’t you know it, they were right!). Given the technology gap between those nerfed Hopper (H20) chips and these top-of-the-line ones (H200), however, this looks to be a different story.