Bytedance, Alibaba keen to buy Nvidia chips after Trump approves exports: Reuters
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The news: Bytedance and Alibaba asked Nvidia about purchasing its H200 AI chips after US President Donald Trump said the US would allow the advanced chips to be exported to China, according to sources cited by Reuters.
The context: Sources told the masthead that the companies are keen to place large orders for the chips, should Beijing approve their orders.
On Tuesday the FT reported that Chinese regulators are expected to limit access to Nvidia’s advanced H200 microchips in the country, after Trump announced that he had informed Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US will allow Nvidia to ship the H200 chips to approved customers in China, “under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security.”
Chinese companies want to use Nvidia’s H200 chips as their ability to train models are currently unmatched by domestic equivalents which are more suitable for inference, sources told Reuters.
The Information reported on Wednesday that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has already been developing its next major model using several thousand Nvidia’s state-of-the-art Blackwell chips which the US had forbidden from being exported to China. Sources told the outlet that the chips being used by DeepSeek were smuggled into China through a convoluted scheme that involves sending them to data centres in countries that are allowed to buy them, and then dismantling the servers containing the chips and importing the equipment in pieces to China.
The sources: Reuters, The Information
