Nvidia H200 Shipments Reach China Amid Loosened Import Block

The first shipments of Nvidia H200 accelerators have reached China, with ByteDance and Tencent each receiving roughly 10,000 units. This development marks a significant shift in the country's import block, which had previously restricted the movement of these chips into mainland China.

Background

The US had approved the export of H200 accelerators to certain Chinese companies, including ByteDance and Tencent, in exchange for a 25% cut of every sale to the US Treasury. However, Beijing had been directing buyers to purchase the chips through Hong Kong, rather than allowing them to be imported directly into mainland China. This had resulted in a significant backlog of orders, with Nvidia reportedly holding around 500,000 H200 accelerators built for Chinese customers.

Challenges in Deployment

Despite the loosening of the import block, there are still significant challenges to deploying the H200 accelerators in China. The chips require a substantial amount of power to operate, with a fully loaded eight-GPU HGX H200 server pulling roughly 10 kW. This has created a dilemma for companies looking to deploy the chips, as Hong Kong's data center infrastructure is not equipped to handle the power requirements. The city's average PUE of 1.62 pushes actual grid draw well above the IT figure, making it difficult for companies to find a suitable location to deploy the chips.

Impact on the Market

The delivery of the H200 accelerators to ByteDance and Tencent is expected to have a significant impact on the market. Chinese labs are increasingly using domestic accelerators for inference, but are still reliant on Nvidia hardware for training frontier models. The inability to deploy the H200 accelerators in mainland China has kept the market captive for domestic chipmakers, with companies such as Huawei and DeepSeek developing their own accelerators. The following table summarizes the approved purchases and power requirements for the H200 accelerators:

Future Developments

The situation is expected to continue evolving, with the Northern Metropolis data center cluster in Hong Kong slated to come online in 2029. This is expected to provide some relief to companies looking to deploy the H200 accelerators, but it is unclear whether it will be enough to meet the demand. As the market continues to develop, it will be important to watch how the deployment of the H200 accelerators affects the balance between domestic and foreign chipmakers in China.