The Trump administration cleared sales of Nvidia‘s H200 AI chips to approximately 10 major Chinese technology companies on Thursday, according to three people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters — a partial reversal of years of escalating semiconductor export restrictions and the most significant opening of the US-China chip trade since Joe Biden first imposed restrictions in 2022.
The firms include Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com. AMD simultaneously won clearance to restart MI308 sales in China. China approved its first major batch of H200 imports, with ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent cleared to purchase more than 400,000 units combined.
The deal comes with an unprecedented condition: a fee on chip sales — reported at between 15% and 25% — paid directly to the US Treasury. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the supply chain was now “getting fired up” to fulfill the new orders.
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The most advanced Nvidia chips, including the H100 and successor architectures, remain restricted. The H200 is capable but not frontier-tier; Chinese AI labs have been designing models around its specifications following previous rounds of restrictions.
Claims circulating Thursday that the US had “lifted all export restrictions and trading bans” significantly overstate what was announced — this is a targeted reopening for a specific chip tier to a specific list of companies, with a fee attached.
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China accounted for roughly 17% of Nvidia’s revenue in its most recent fiscal year — down from approximately 25% before export controls took effect — and the company had warned investors of a $5.5 billion revenue impact from chip restrictions in 2025. Nvidia shares surged more than 5% on the news.
Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance have spent the restriction years building their own chip design capabilities. Whether renewed Nvidia access slows or accelerates that domestic buildout is the question the chip industry will be asking for the rest of 2026.
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