Nvidia gains after report that there’s so much demand from China it’s considering boosting H200 output
Shares of Nvidia caught a bid in premarket trading after Reuters reported that the chip designer has told customers in China that it is considering adding more capacity to produce H200 chips in light of a deluge of demand.
The report cites two sources briefed on the matter, one of whom added that Nvidia is “leaning toward adding new capacity,” per Reuters.
The outlet recently reported that Alibaba and ByteDance were eager to buy H200 chips, which were previously subject to export curbs and banned from being sold to the world’s second-largest economy. US President Donald Trump announced an end to these export restrictions on Monday, in exchange for 25% of the proceeds from their sale going to the US government.
The chip designer’s stock jumped on that revelation, but pared gains following a report from the Financial Times that “regulators in Beijing have been discussing ways to permit limited access to the H200,” according to two people familiar with the matter.
If Nvidia wants to boost H200 production, it’ll face stiff competition for memory and packaging from both other chip designers as well as internally from its own new top offering, Blackwell.
The H200 is the top chip from Nvidia’s Hopper line, the generation preceding Blackwell. Analysts indicate it’s more powerful than anything Chinese buyers can get their hands on from domestic sources.
It’s also certainly much more advanced than the H20, a nerfed version of the premier Hopper offering. That chip had an on-again, off-again relationship with China: it was tailor-made for sale there, but then subject to export restrictions. Once those were lifted, China pushed its tech champions to forgo purchases of these processors, preferring they buy from domestic alternatives, and major purchases “never materialized,” per Nvidia CFO Colette Kress.
