Nvidia must now find a way to meet robust Chinese demand without displeasing other customers in the US
China and Taiwan they are at loggerheads but not when it comes to business. In fact, Taiwan is home to the headquarters of TSMC, which is the largest third-party chip manufacturer in the world. And, obviously, the leading US company in chips for artificial intelligence Nvidia is among its largest customers.
At a time of great AI development, Chinese companies have placed orders at Nvidia for over 2 million of its H200 chips for 2026 but the US company currently only has 700,000 units in stock. For this reason it turned to Tsmc for production.
Ora Nvidia it must now find a way to satisfy robust Chinese demand without displeasing other customers in the US. It should be noted that Beijing has not yet given the green light to shipments of H200 chips while the Trump administration has authorized, but only recently, exports of these chips to China. This is an important agreement for Nvidia given that, according to some sources, the prices of the H200 should be around 27 thousand dollars each.
“Authorized sales of the H200 in China will have no impact on our ability to supply customers in the United States,” an Nvidia spokesperson said. China is a highly competitive market with rapidly growing local chip suppliers. The blockade of American exports has, unfortunately, only favored foreign competition.”
The potential order would mark a significant expansion of the production of H200 at a time when Nvidia has been focused on powering its new Blackwell and Rubin chip lines. The H200 is part of the previous generation.
The majority of orders (over 2 million chips) come from major Chinese internet companies, which consider the H200 as a significant upgrade over currently available chips. According to the Chinese newspaper South China Morning ByteDance, Tik Tok’s parent company, plans to spend around 100 billion yuan (around 12 billion euros) on Nvidia chips in 2026, compared to around 85 billion in 2025.
The government of Beijing is deciding whether to allow H200 imports over concerns that access to advanced foreign chips could slow the development of the domestic AI semiconductor industry.
The problem is that the producers of chip Chinese, despite their efforts, have not yet managed to offer products capable of competing with Nvidia’s H200.
