An Nvidia spokesperson said that the company does not levy 100% advanced payment from their Chinese customers for H200 chips. The clarification came in response to a Reuters story that claimed that Nvidia was demanding full, non-refundable advanced payments from Chinese customers due to uncertainty in the US-China trade relationship.
In a statement given to Reuters, Nvidia made it clear that they “would never require customers to pay for products they do not receive”. The move signals Nvidia’s interest in keeping business in China’s rapidly expanding AI infrastructure, despite the strained relationship between Beijing and Washington.
What H200 Access Could Mean for China’s AI Race
H200 is a gold mine for Chinese AI hyperscalers since it is vastly more powerful than the prior chips China had, like H20 and and Huawei ascend-class GPUs. Chinese firms have long faced computational capacity as a bottleneck for expanding their AI infrastructure. Hence, the U.S decision that allowed Nvidia to sell H200 in the Chinese market resulted in an inflow of 2 million orders, exceeding expectations and overwhelming Nvidia’s inventory.
World nations and Chinese companies are pouring billions of dollars into getting ahead in the AI race. Beijing has always encouraged local production and scaling in order for independent technological advancement. The Chinese government has taken extreme measures to nudge Chinese citizens to use Chinese-made smartphones, browsers, cloud technology, software, and apps. Beijing is leaning towards a similar strategy in terms of AI tech, yet has been so far unable to develop advanced chips.
If Beijing approves the H200 shipment, major players like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and ByteDance will be able to train larger and better AI models. The chips will also boost the large AI data centre projects and cause leaps in overall computational capacity. In short, H200 access is good news for China’s short-term AI scaling ambitions, yet a negative evaluation of the progress of its homegrown cutting-edge GPU goals.
U.S Gatekeeping Strategy to Slow Down China’s AI Advancement
H200 is indeed an advanced AI chip, but it’s not the best Nvidia has in its production lines. The Blackwell Chips (B100, B200, and GB200) beat H-series chips in architecture, memory, system design, and AI performance benchmarks. Moreover, the Grace-Blackwell (GB200) superchips offer next-gen system architecture with superior CPU-GPU integration. NVIDIA has also announced ‘Rubin’- a greater improvement on the B-series that will achieve 5x AI performance compared to the GB200.
In short, Nvidia has better chips and is already working on more advanced chips to meet the computational demands of the AI boom. Yet, the U.S policy prevents them from selling advanced chips in the Chinese market.
The U.S Commerce Department’s BIS (Bureau of Industry and Security) bans Nvidia from exporting chips above a certain performance threshold to China. The U.S has also made similar interventions in TSMC (the largest chip manufacturer in the world) to prevent China from accessing advanced semiconductor technology.
Hence, the U.S. technological gatekeeping strategy involves taxes, tariffs, and explicit export bans of high-end technology to China. Although the Chinese tech landscape is independent to a certain extent, advanced chip manufacturing remains a bottleneck for the country’s AI ambitions.
What Does Nvidia Stand to Gain if Beijing Approves Chip Shipment?
NVIDIA has already received an order for 2 million H200 Chips from China. The reported price for each chip is $27,000. Hence, a shipment approval from Beijing would generate $54 billion in revenue from the H200 deal alone. This can potentially push Nvidia stocks further past expectations.
NVIDIA’s stock is currently priced at $184.90 after a 34.55% rally in 2025. Major stock market analysts project an average 43.27% upturn for the company in 2026. The target prices go as high as $352 and average around $264.97. If the U.S policy shifts again regarding export restrictions to China, Nvidia will experience significant changes in its revenue trajectory.
