China May Let Alibaba Buy Nvidia H200s — But Only for Training

The Chinese government is reportedly planning to let top AI companies like Alibaba, ByteDance, and DeepSeek buy a limited number of Nvidia H200 chips to ease a severe compute crunch. The US approved exports back in December 2025, but Beijing held off on issuing purchase permits — partly to protect domestic chipmakers, partly over fears that the chips could be remotely tracked or disabled.

Now, sources say China is considering approvals for fewer than 200,000 chips — less than half of what firms requested in early 2026 — and nothing is final yet. The catch: those chips can only be used for training on public data. No sensitive client info allowed. And when it comes to running models (inference), the government is making it clear: use domestic processors first. It's a deliberate push to strengthen China's homegrown chip ecosystem.

The timing is notable. US authorities have been cracking down on chip smuggling through Southeast Asia, tightening gray-market channels. That leaves Chinese firms with an even bigger training gap. For Nvidia, even this small crack in the door could mean an unexpected revenue bump.