Suppliers of components for Nvidia's artificial intelligence (AI) chip H200 have reportedly halted production temporarily.
The Financial Times (FT) reported on the 16th, citing sources, that companies supplying H200 core parts such as printed circuit boards (PCB) have halted production due to the impact of China's customs controls. Earlier, on the 7th, Chinese customs reportedly summoned logistics companies in Shenzhen and notified them that they could not accept customs declarations for the H200.
Accordingly, the parts companies said they decided to halt production to avoid inventory losses. China, aiming for semiconductor self-sufficiency, has pressured domestic companies to expand the use of China-made AI chips. Even for the H200, whose export the Donald Trump administration conditionally approved, Chinese authorities are said to have issued guidance to purchase only "if necessary."
The H200 is a prior generation to the latest Blackwell architecture but is regarded as optimized for training large-scale AI models and Generative AI. Because of this, demand for the H200 from Chinese IT giants such as Alibaba, ByteDance Ltd., and Tencent is said to be significant.
Chinese IT corporations, constrained by government regulations, are using China-made chips but prefer Nvidia products, which perform better and are easier to maintain and manage. Nvidia expected demand for more than 1 million H200 units in the Chinese market. Accordingly, component suppliers also planned to begin deliveries in March. However, with customs blocked, some Chinese corporations have reportedly canceled H200 orders.