US-based Nvidia Corp. has resumed production of its H200 artificial intelligence chips for the Chinese market, Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said during a developer conference in San Jose, California.
Demand signals from China have intensified in recent weeks, he said.
“We’ve been approved for a lot of customers in the PRC,” the top executive said. – We have received orders from multiple customers and are in the process of restarting production. The supply chain is kicking in.”
In quarterly reports published in late February, Nvidia noted that it had received approval to ship “a small number of H200 products” to China, but this has yet to generate revenue.
Nvidia has not said how much it expects to earn from selling these chips to Chinese customers, but has previously said its annual revenue from selling AI processors in the PRC could be in the tens of billions of dollars.
The US Department of Commerce last April banned the export of Nvidia H20 chips designed specifically for the Chinese market, which are twice as powerful as the H200. The ban was lifted in August.
Beijing, meanwhile, discouraged companies from buying H20s, while Nvidia tried to obtain licences for the more advanced Blackwell chips. In late August, it suspended production of the H20.
In December, U.S. authorities said they would allow the company to sell the H200 in China provided it handed over 25 per cent of the revenue. At the end of January this year, after Huang’s visit, Beijing signalled that it would also allow shipments of the chips.
The day before, Nvidia also announced plans to allocate half of its free cash flow (FCF) to share buybacks and other investor-friendly measures.
Shares of the chip maker were up 1 per cent during earlier trading on Wednesday.