China conditionally allows DeepSeek to buy Nvidia chips
China has given top AI startup DeepSeek the go-ahead to buy Nvidia’s H200 AI chips, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have been given permission to purchase more than 400,000 H200 chips in total, Reuters reported, citing sources.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told reporters in Taipei on Thursday that his company had received no such information.
He added that he believed China was still finalizing the license. Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment regarding DeepSeek’s approval.
Sources said that China’s ministries of industry and commerce have approved all four companies, but stated that they will implement the conditions that are still being finalized. These conditions are decided by China’s state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), according to one of the sources.
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Commerce and NDRC did not respond to requests for comment.
DeepSeek, which shook up the global tech industry early last year by releasing artificial intelligence models at a fraction of the cost of models developed by U.S. rivals such as OpenAI, did not respond to a request for comment.
Nvidia’s second most powerful AI chip, the H200, has emerged as a major flashpoint in US-China relations. Despite strong demand from Chinese companies and US approval for exports, Beijing’s hesitation to allow imports has been the main obstacle to shipments.
Earlier this month, the US officially cleared the way for Nvidia to sell the H200 to China, where the company sees strong appetite. However, Chinese authorities have the final say on whether they will allow the product to be shipped.
Any purchase of H200 chips by DeepSeek could draw scrutiny from US politicians. Reuters reported on Wednesday that a senior US politician claimed that Nvidia helped DeepSeek develop artificial intelligence models that were later used by the Chinese military, according to a letter sent to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
DeepSeek is expected to release V4, its next-generation AI model with powerful coding capabilities, in mid-February, The Information reported earlier this month.
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