Nvidia reportedly halts production of H200 chips for sale to China in favor of Vera Rubin ramp

Selling H200s to China is proving more difficult than Nvidia had anticipated.

The FT reports that the chip designer has asked TSMC to stop output of the H200 processors and instead produce Vera Rubin offerings, its upcoming flagship edition, citing two people familiar with the matter.

There’s likely a lot more conviction that megacap tech companies outside of China will appreciate any supply boost for these next-generation processors than the US-China trade and regulatory morass that’s complicated H200 sales will suddenly be swept away.

Nvidia had H200s in inventory and, per the FT, also already produced 250,000 of these chips — so the sales opportunity is still there, but just diminished for now.

The loose sequencing on how we got here, based on myriad reports on the topic:

• Nvidia has wanted to sell AI chips to China;

• Back in December, US President Donald Trump said this would be allowed for the H200, a generation that was much more powerful than China produced domestically, but not cutting-edge tech (as well as chips with similar specs from other producers);

• Leading Chinese tech companies wanted to buy a lot of these chips;

• Nvidia called upon TSMC to increase production of these chips in expectation of realizing a sales opportunity as high as $54 billion for 2026;

• China would prefer its companies to purchase from domestic producers to reduce their dependence on US technology;

• The US wants to limit the total number of these newly-permitted AI chips that can get into China as well as how many each buyer can purchase;

• Nvidia, which had planned to have its first shipments of H200s there by the Lunar New Year, still hasn’t sold any of these chips to China.

The twists and turns here, and conflicting media coverage, has been maddening to try and keep track of. I cannot imagine the level of frustration for an executive attempting to navigate their operations through this haze.

Maybe the real H200 sales were the friends we never made along the way.