Chinese firms rush for Nvidia chips as US prepares to lift ban

Chinese firms have begun rushing to order Nvidia's H20 AI chips as the company plans to resume sales to mainland China, Reuters reports. The chip giant expects to receive US government licenses soon so that it can restart shipments of the restricted processors just days after CEO Jensen Huang met with President Donald Trump, potentially generating $15 billion to $20 billion in additional revenue this year.

Nvidia said in a statement that it is filing applications with the US government to resume H20 sales and that "the US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon."

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, Nvidia's financial trajectory has been linked to the demand for specialized hardware capable of executing AI models with maximum efficiency. Nvidia designed its data center GPU to perform the massive parallel computations required by neural networks, processing countless matrix operations simultaneously.

The H20 chips represent Nvidia's most capable AI processors legally available in China, though they contain less computing power than versions sold elsewhere due to export restrictions imposed in 2022. Nvidia is currently banned from selling its most powerful GPUs in China. Despite these limitations, Chinese tech giants, including ByteDance and Tencent, are reportedly scrambling to place orders for the lesser chip through what sources describe as an approved list managed by Nvidia.