Nvidia Ships 20,000 H200 AI Chips to ByteDance and Tencent

Nvidia has delivered approximately 10,000 H200 AI processors each to ByteDance and Tencent, marking the first major shipments of the hardware into mainland China. These deliveries follow a December 2025 decision by the United States government to authorize vetted Chinese firms to purchase up to 100,000 chips each.

While the U.S. loosened export restrictions, the Chinese government had previously blocked imports to protect domestic semiconductor firms such as Huawei. Beijing has since eased this block but now requires companies to keep the majority of their licensed hardware in Hong Kong to avoid undermining the domestic industry.

This regulatory requirement creates a logistical bottleneck, as Hong Kong currently lacks the data center capacity to meet the high energy demands of H200 servers. Despite the reopening of this critical market for Nvidia, the company's most advanced Blackwell B200 chips remain restricted for export to China.